Gil Hodges

Gil Hodges

Gilbert Ray Hodges, ne Hodge, was an American Major League Baseball first baseman and manager. He played for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers for 18 years. He was inducted into the New York Mets Hall of Fame in 1982. Hodges is generally considered to be the best defensive first baseman of the 1950s.

About Gil Hodges in brief

Summary Gil HodgesGilbert Ray Hodges, ne Hodge, was an American Major League Baseball first baseman and manager. He played for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers for 18 years. He was inducted into the New York Mets Hall of Fame in 1982. Hodges is generally considered to be the best defensive first baseman of the 1950s. He also managed the Mets to the 1969 World Series title over the favored Baltimore Orioles. In 2014, Hodges appeared for the second time as a candidate on the National Baseball Hall of Famer’s Golden Era Committee election ballot. He and the other candidates all missed getting elected. He is the only player since 1900 to hit four home runs in a game without the benefit of extra innings; he also had seventeen total bases in the third game of the game, tying Lou Gehrig for the third-highest total in MLB history. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II and received a Bronze Star Medal with Combat \”V\” for heroism under fire. His wife, Irene, was a coal miner from Princeton, Indiana, and he had an older brother, Robert, and a younger sister, Marjorie. He died in a car accident in 2009. He had a son, David, who is also a professional baseball player, and has a daughter, Amy. He has three grandchildren, two step-grandchildren, and one step-great-grandchild. His great-grandson, David Hodges Jr., is a former Major League baseball player who played with the Los Angeles Angels and the San Francisco Giants.

He won the Gold Glove Award for three consecutive seasons in the early 1960s. His father, Charles, also played in the Major Leagues, and died in 2010 at the age of 89. He suffered a heart attack in 2011 while playing for the San Diego Padres. His son David, a former MLB player, is now a coach at the University of California, Los Angeles. His daughter, Mary, is a first-grade teacher at a local middle school in California. He retired in 2012 after a career in which he was named to seven consecutive All-Star teams, including seven straight All-Stars. He hit for the cycle on June 25, 1949, on his way to his first of seven consecutive all-star teams. In the 1949 Series, he drove in the sole run in Brooklyn’s only victory, a 1–0 triumph in Game Two. In 1950, he was only the second player to hit a home run in four different pitchers, with the first coming off Warren Spahn. He batted. 249 with 11 home runs and 70 runs batted in as a rookie in 1948, and tied Hack Wilson’s 1932 club record for right-handed hitters with 23 home runs. He ranked second in NL history with 1,281 assists and 1,614 double plays when his career ended, and was among the league’s career leaders in games and total chances at first base. His only World Series appearance was as a pinch hitter for pitcher Rex Barney in Game Seven, but he struck out.