On This Day in History, April 4: Overdue for Baseball Hall of Fame
Gilbert Raymond Hodges was born on April 4, 1924, in Princeton, Indiana, but he was a part of Brooklyn; a New York baseball treasure, a naturalized Brooklyn “Bum.”
Hodges was 19 when he played third base for one game with the Dodgers in late 1943. He struck out twice and walked, then marched away as a WWII draftee in the Marines.
He returned to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 as a catcher, but on the insistence of Roy Campanella, he was moved to first base. Manager Leo Durocher said: “With my catching set, I put a first baseman’s glove on our other rookie catcher, Gil Hodges, and told him to have some fun. Three days later, I looked up and wow, I was looking at the best first baseman I’d seen since Dolf Camilli.”