Gil Hodges’s Hall of Fame election and the Mets managerial search

Nothing causes you to examine your present quite like something good happening to someone from your past. Your childhood best friend gets married and that makes you wonder why you can’t get a date. A co-worker – hired the same day as you — gets a great promotion and you find yourself still in the mailroom. It’s no different with baseball teams. This past Sunday, it was announced that Gil Hodges — sainted among legions of Mets fans for guiding our club to its first ever World Series Championship — was finally elected to the Hall of Fame, some 58 years after his last at bat and 49 years after his death. Between 1968 and 1983 – his years eligible on the regular Base Ball Writers Association of America ballot – found him agonizingly short on votes every January. Granted, the fact that he passed away “in the saddle,” as it were, pushed the sympathy vote totals up slightly, but still he came close enough to merit permanent enshrinement in the Hall of Very Good. Now the Veterans Committee has finally pushed him over the threshold, mainly based on his performance as a manager; I can only assume that, as we’re now at a point where only a very few members of the Committee are old enough to have seen Hodges play in his prime.

Full disclosure, I barely got to see him manage: I had just turned seven years old when he was struck by a fatal coronary on a golf course in Florida and I wasn’t really aware of all that went on with the team and with Gil Hodges prior to 1973. But from all contemporaneous writings and reminiscences from his former players, I learned Hodges was at least as responsible for the 1969 Miracle as Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, or Tommie Agee. I read Tug McGraw’s book Screwball when I was a kid and was impressed by how much Hodges was pater familias for that group. According to McGraw, there was no “Generation Gap” in that clubhouse. Players could go talk about non-baseball things of the times – the Viet Nam War, the Kent State shootings, Woodstock – with their manager, the former Marine, who was one of the first to hit the beach in Okinawa during World War II and have a sympathetic ear if they were upset. By the same token, Hodges’s Marine training also made him a no-nonsense guy for things on the field. If you were underperforming, he let you know it – just ask Cleon Jones about the famous “left-field incident.” McGraw told a story about Hodges berating him on the mound for trying to put on a pickoff play with a runner on second and a rookie shortstop, Ted Martinez, who barely spoke English at the time. Hodges came out to see what was going on. McGraw explained that it was – to quote the book — “a trick play. Then Gil got hot. ‘Trick play, my foot!’ he said. ‘You’ve got a hitter in the box, right here! I want to know. How are you going to get this hitter out?’” McGraw did get the batter on a grounder. Like any of us, he wasn’t perfect. There are stories around that he was the main motivator for the trade of Amos Otis for Joe Foy, and was the push behind trading Ken Singleton and Tim Foli for Rusty Staub – a deal completed just after his death. He passed before the Oakland A’s “Mustache Gang” won the World Series, so it makes me wonder if his “no facial hair in the dugout” policy would have held up. In any case, it has often been lamented in Mets fan circles that Hodges wasn’t around to straighten things out as the team declined in the late ‘70s. Would he have been able to prevent the Seaver trade? Could he have kept Jones motivated long enough to fulfill his promise? It would have been fun to see him manage Willie Mays. In any case, a long-term wrong has been righted and Gil Hodges is now officially immortal.

Which brings us to the fact that as of right now, the Mets have no manager. This current owner lockout has brought the offseason to a screeching halt – hello, Max Scherzer! – but it has also given the Mets an opportunity finally do some thorough vetting of the guy they eventually hire. They can take all the time they need, seeing as there may not be a Spring Training to get to. The push here is to hire someone with managerial experience. Their last two attempts train someone on the job were abject failures on the field, without even mentioning Mickey Callaway’s serial sexual harassment. They really need to get this one right, because they actually are contenders in 2022. One of the candidates is Buck Showalter who has won wherever he’s gone, but hasn’t been able to get over the World Series threshold – much like Dusty Baker. If I had a vote, I would definitely take him over the field – assuming that field doesn’t include Bruce Bochy or Mike Scioscia, neither of whom appear to be available or want the job.

So, who will be the next Gil Hodges?