The reorganized Mets minor league system of the late 1960s produced unbelievable arms and a few good bats, had good scouting and acquired just enough hitting, but without the deal for the manager, the Amazin’ Mets may have just been the Average Joes. Gil Hodges was the Miracle Man.
A coalminer’s son from Indiana, a Marine sergeant and Bronze Star recipient in World War II, and a slugging first baseman with trusting hands who was so beloved in Brooklyn that a borough’s prayers went out to him during a famous slump, Hodges could best be summed up by three simple words on a pin the Mets distributed 28 years after his death: “A Quiet Hero.” Actions spoke loudly with Hodges. He made every man in his charge rely on the other. He told them individually before the 1969 season that he wanted just a little bit more out each of them, and that would make the whole better. The result was a team no one could’ve imagined, except for Hodges.
As the first baseman on the expansion Mets, he played along with the promotional photos, jumping in the air before the first Mets game in 1962. Yet when Cubs third baseman Ron Santo clicked his heels three times after every Cubs win at Wrigley Field in 1969, Hodges called him on it and walked away at home plate during the exchange of lineup cards in July. Santo kept clicking, but with Hodges’s club on their tail, Santo had fewer opportunities to jump and less reason to do so. The Mets went from 10 games down to eight games up over the last month and a half of the season.
The Mets had traded Hodges in 1963 so he could manage in Washington and then reacquired after the 1967 season. He made recommendations on personnel to get and get rid of, and probably would have eventually moved on to be general manager if he’d lived.
Hodges suffered a heart attack in 1968, but he was in good health when the Mets took the field the following spring. The Mets were in great shape too. Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Gary Gentry, and Nolan Ryan were at his disposal, along with Tug McGraw, whom he’d switched to the bullpen and approved use of a screwball. Hodges made the most of veterans Ron Taylor, Cal Koonce, and Don Cardwell. He used a strict platoon at four positions, but he wasn’t afraid to go with his instincts despite the book’s logic, even if the book was his own. He let Ron Swoboda bat against right-hander Eddie Watt in the eighth inning with Game 5 of the 1969 World Series tied, 3<\->3. Rocky knocked in the run that capped the Miracle.
There was some good fortune that year, certainly, and Hodges found some himself when a baseball with shoe polish rolled to him and started a crucial Mets rally in the World Series. But Hodges had worked hard instilling confidence and installing his guys in the right situation. That it didn’t work in 1970 or 1971 was frustrating, but ’72 looked like a great team.
Rube Walker, Joe Pignatano, and Eddie Yost, coaches who’d followed Hodges from Washington and probably would have followed him through a wall, watched Hodges drop from a heart attack in a parking lot after playing golf together on April 2, 1972. New York was mortified. Hodges had helped take Brooklyn to its lone world championship in 1955. Then he made the whole country take notice of the next generation of National League baseball in New York baseball. They’ve never had a finer leader.
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