By Bill Hall October baseball is here again. The days are shorter, the air is crisper and the stakes are higher. For baseball legend Gil Hodges, October brought more than its share of disappointments—World Series losses in 1949, 1952, 1953 and 1956 and end-of-season eliminations in 1950 and 1951. The Brooklyn Dodgers won their only World Championship in 1955. The Los Angeles Dodgers claimed their first flag on the west coast four years later, and in both of those seasons, Hodges was a key contributor. It was sweet redemption after the earlier failures. Hodges passed away far too young in 1972, but his loyal fans are still hoping to see one more moment of redemptive triumph added to his story—election to the Hall of Fame. Sometime not long after the final out of the 2014 World Series, the National Baseball Hall of Fame is expected to announce the ten candidates who will appear on the Golden Era Ballot. In 2011, the single Veterans Committee was split into three groups, meeting on a rotating yearly basis to consider candidates from different eras of the game’s past. The committee includes Hall members, executives and media representatives. Hodges falls into the Golden Era—those who played or managed primarily from 1947 to 1972. In his many decades of eligibility with the baseball writers and the former Veterans Committee, he accumulated more votes than any other man not since elected. Many thought 2011 would be his year, but it was not. Twelve votes were needed from the sixteen-member panel to elect a candidate; Hodges finished tied for third with nine votes. That same year, lifetime Dodger Tommy Lasorda pleaded: “I say to all of you who vote, or are just fans, please get Gil Hodges into the Hall of Fame.” A group of fans are answering that plea, using Facebook and an online petition to communicate their support for Hodges to the committee. In the first three months, the campaign has attracted almost 2,000 signers, including fifteen major league players and a host of baseball announcers, reporters and historians, as well as several charities and institutions. The petition can be found at: ipetitions/petition/gil-hodges-belongs-in-the-baseball-hall-of-fame Sponsors of the petition say they hope committee members will be impressed by the number of people with ties to the game who believe Hodges has earned his plaque—not just players, journalists and historians, but hundreds and hundreds of fans who remember and appreciate the power-hitting, graceful fielding first baseman and canny manager with affection and respect.
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 04:21:37 +0000
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