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HAD TO COME BACK ALONE
Last year Brooklyn's
,hero was Los Angeles'
goat; that's changed now,
thanks to a homesick wife
who made a sacrifice
Mrs. Joan Hodges and children (Cynthia and Irene shown here) meant
more to Gil Hodges than homers, as last season's hitting proved."
by Ed Fitzgerald
They thought Gil Hodges was through
after last year. He was one of the
biggest names and brightest stars of the
colorful Dodgers who had moved from
Brooklyn to Los Angeles but, like the
ball club itself, he had flopped miser
ably in his new surroundings.
The best he could do was hit .259, a
40-point drop from his average of the
year before, and he had suffered the
humiliation of seeing his job taken from
him by a raw rookie.
Even more painful was the way the
r fans . climbed on him. It seemed as
though they were picking him as
scapegoat for their disappointment in
the highly advertised Dodgers, who
skidded to seventh place in California.
Gil couldn't understand it; in Brooklyn,
the fans had always loved him. Once,
when he was battling a terrific slump,
Father Herbert Redmond, saying Mass
at St. Francis Xavier Church in Brook
lyn, told his flock: "It's too hot for a
sermon. Go home, keep the Command
ments and say a prayer for Gil Hodges."
That was the way it used to be.
But worst of all for family-man Gil
Hodges, whose wife and three children
mean more to him than anything else,
was the fact that things were as bad
at home as on the field. Gil's wife, Joan,
is a Brooklyn girl and, although Gil
comes from Indiana, he was happy to
settle down in a house in Brooklyn
after their marriage in 1948. It was
pleasant for Joan because her own fam
ily was nearby, and her mother and
sister dropped in almost every day.
When Gil went on the road .with the
ball club, Joan wasn't alone.
But in California, everything was
IS faintly Weekly, September 13, 1959
different. Joan felt uprooted, and when
Gil was on a long trip, she felt desper
ately alone. She was unhappy and dis
satisfied, and Gil suffered- with her.
Gil was only 35 years old, in perfect
condition, but apparently he was all
washed up. He wasn't meeting the ball
well, he killed one Dodger rally after '
another by striking out or popping up,
and he tried so many cures for his
batting failures that he became hope
lessly confused at the plate. He had lost
confidence, and it was clear that unless
something drastic was done, Gil Hodges'
great career was going to end.
It was Joan who seized upon the so-i
lution. Nobody knows better than she
that Gil isn't the kind of husband and
father who can forget about his family
when he goes off to work. Little Gilly.
Irene and Cynthia are his pets, and
there is nothing he wouldn't do for
Joan. Once he refused to report to
spring training until their first child
was born. Another time he jumped the
club during training and flew home
without permission to make sure Joan
was all right after Cynthia was born.
It stood to reason that if Joan was"
' miserable, Gil was going to be, too.
"I realized that I'd been hurting Gil,
acting the way I was and carrying on
so," Joan says, "and I made up my
mind that the best thing I could do for
him was to stay home all summer."
"Home," for the Hodges family is
still Brooklyn. So Joan and the kids
stayed with Gil during spring training,
as is their custom, and then, for the
first time, said goodbye to Daddy and
went north to Flatbush while he flew
west with the Dodgers.
By midseason Gil Hodges, reestab
lished as the regular first-baseman of
the ball club, was hitting close to .300,
walloping home runs at his old-time
rate and breaking up ball games with .
the key hit in the clutch.
Gil has never been a hieh-averaee
hitter. In 10 full seasons in Brooklyn,
he got over .300 only twice, hitting
.302 in 1953 and .304 the next year. But
ever since heplayed high-school ball in
Petersburg, Ind., and later at St. Jo
seph's College near home, he has been
a Die to generate tremendous power. He
went into the 1959 season with 320
home runs and with seven years of 100
or more runs-batted-in. That's" power
hitting. Gil takes a full cut at the pitch
and his thickly muscled shoulders and
arms are capable of drivine the ball out
of sight if he gtits even a fair piece of '
it. On the night of Aug. 31, 1950, at
Ebbets Field, he smashed four home
runs in a single game against the
Braves, throwing the stands into such
a turmoil that Joan closed her eyes
when he swung for the fourth one. 1 .
Six-feet, one-and-a-half inches tall,.
200 pounds - of solid bone and
muscle, Gil is regarded by his fellow
ball players as one of the strongest
men in the game. He has hands like
hams. "Gil doesn't really need a glove
to play first base," Pee Wee Reese
jokes, "He just wears one because it's
fashionable." It was this sheer physical
power or Gil's that made it so hard -for
baseball people to believe he didn't
have it any more. But the important
thing was that Gil didn't believe it,