It’s not like I don’t do a long excerpt from Faith & Fear every week, but I know that Greg would like people to hear (read) his words about Gil. So and extended share….(and some of the audio is here. We had a tech glitch in the top of the 9th and lost some of the recording.)
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Our beloved New York Mets were conceived by Bill Shea, delivered by George Weiss, nurtured by Joan Payson and brought into the world by Casey Stengel. Those were all crucial figures in the development of what Casey called our Metsies and their role in our history shouldn’t be overlooked.
It was Gil Hodges, however, who raised the Mets into an entity of substance; who made them make themselves into something; who guided them into growing up sooner than anybody on the outside would have imagined; and who gave us forever after a touchstone we could always proudly come home to.
What Gil Hodges did for the Mets and for us as Mets fans was and is and always will be enormous.
Gil Hodges didn’t invent the Mets, but he did make them real.
You may think I’m referring solely to winning the 1969 World Series with a team that had never won even half of its games before, and yes, that’s part of it. But Gil Hodges, as Mets manager, transcends even that rightfully legendary accomplishment.
When you read the contemporary accounts from when Gil ran the Mets and you listen, decades later, to the players Gil led, you understand it has to be about more than simply charging forward from 61 wins to 73 wins and then to 100 wins plus seven more in the postseason. You sense the transformation he effected, on a franchise level and within the lives of dozens of individuals he touched directly. When you hear about who Gil was and what he did and how he treated others, you can feel his impact radiate outward to not just a ballclub that played above what was supposed to be its head, but to everyone who cared about that club and who identified with that club.
That’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of Mets fans, then and now. And that means everything to people like us.
There’s plenty more one could add about Gil Hodges, whether it’s his Hall of Fame-caliber playing career for Brooklyn, L.A. and the Original Mets; the home run records he set; the crucial role he played in winning the Dodgers their first world championship in 1955; the splendid job he did managing the Washington Senators; the valiant service he gave his country as a United States Marine in World War II; the impact he had on his community; and, of course, his family.
The only thing that seems to be missing when one endeavors to discuss Gil Hodges is a bad word, because nobody in or out of baseball seemed to have one to say about him.
It was a remarkable life Gil Hodges packed into not quite 48 years and it’s a remarkable legacy we celebrate today with our small token of appreciation for how he raised our team to be all it could be.
The Queens Baseball Convention is proud to inaugurate the Gil Hodges Unforgettable Fire Award, dedicated to the person whose memory eternally warms our hearts, brightens our spirits and lights our way. We plan to present this award annually to someone who casts a truly incandescent glow for us as Mets fans.
For the first one, we agreed there could be no better recipient than the man himself. Therefore, we are incredibly honored that joining us to accept this award is someone who carries on in the name of Gil Hodges and does that name proud.
Ladies and gentlemen, Gil Hodges, Jr.
