Gil Hodges’ Hall of Fame candidacy was solid based on a standout playing career, but his tenure as Mets manager burnished a case that was finally won.
A day after the Golden Days Era committee elected Hodges to Cooperstown — he had appeared on a Hall of Fame ballot for the 35th time — two of his former Mets disciples on Monday recalled the imprint he left on the organization. With Hodges as the manager, the “Miracle Mets” won the 1969 World Series, one of only two championships in franchise history.
Hodges, a first baseman who had spent 16 seasons with the Dodgers, was finishing his playing career with the Mets in 1962 and ’63 when he intersected with the team’s future at the position.
“He taught me to play first base even though I was going to take over a position that he had with the Mets,” Ed Kranepool said. “He taught me the way to play the game, the right way to play the game and then later on in my career I wound up playing for him.”
Hodges finished his career with 370 home runs and three Gold Glove awards, as part of World Series winning teams with the Dodgers in 1955 (the franchise’s only championship in Brooklyn) and ’59. Upon his retirement he was hired to manage the Senators. The Mets traded for the rights to hire him as manager following their last-place finish in 1967. To that point the franchise had been a laughingstock.
“I remember in spring training he told us right off the bat, ‘You will not be the same old Mets you have been in the past,’ ” Art Shamsky said. “I hadn’t been there, so I thought it was interesting. There was no nonsense from that point on. He knew what he wanted to do as a manager and take over that team.
“Subsequently we finished ninth, [one] game out of last place, but you could see us develop as a team and through his guidance you knew we were going to start playing better baseball.”
The Mets, with Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman and Nolan Ryan on the pitching staff, rallied and finished 100-62 in 1969 and then beat the Braves in the NLCS. They handled the Orioles in five games in the World Series. Hodges presided over winning teams that missed the playoffs the next two seasons before suffering a fatal heart attack during spring training in 1972. He was 47 years old.
“We would not have won the World Series in 1969 without Gil being the manager of that team, so that’s the best thing I could say about him,” Shamsky said. “He was a stern, tough guy, but fair-minded.
“He platooned in four positions, sometimes in five positions. None of us liked it. It wasn’t good for our careers, it was just not a good situation but it was working and we did it because Gil Hodges was the manager and we had the utmost respect for him.”
Hodges’ death, from Kranepool’s perspective, prevented the Mets from becoming a perennial pennant contender in the 1970s. The Mets lost Game 7 of the World Series to Oakland in 1973 under manager Yogi Berra and began a downward spiral.
“There’s no question about it as a player that was there, we would have won many more pennants [with Hodges],” Kranepool said. “I think we would have won in ’73 and that ballclub would have been kept around and we would have competed for many years because the pitching staff that we had was a quality staff.”