Gil Hodges was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2022. More than 20,000 have played major league baseball, but only 271 reached the Hall of Fame as a player. While making the Hall is certainly a big deal, his road to Cooperstown was a long one, especially considering the strong early support for his candidacy.
The BBWAA Ballot
There are two main avenues to Hall of Fame selection. The first comes through the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA). The writers select up to 10 players from a list of eligible candidates. Your name must appear on at least 75% of the ballots to be elected. Eligibility ran for up to 15 years (subsequently reduced to 10) and a candidate’s support tends to increase over time. Some writers are reluctant to select a player in his first year of eligibility. Mariano Rivera is the only unanimous selection in HoF history. More than 5% of writers left Willie Mays off the ballot. More than 10% left Mickey Mantle off.
Players that exhaust their BBWAA eligibility still have another shot. The Hall of Fame has established committees (variously called the Old Timers Committee, the Veterans Committee, and now the Eras Committees) to consider previously overlooked players. The assorted Veterans committees over the years account for more than half of all Hall of Famers.
Hodges made a strong early showing on the BBWA ballot. He appeared on 48.3% of the ballots in 1970, just his second year of eligibility. That rose to 50% the next year and was above 50% in ten other years. The 1971 ballot provides a good illustration of Gil’s level of support.
Hodges ranked fourth overall. No one made the Hall that year. Two of the players ahead of him (Yogi Berra and Early Wynn) made it the next year. Ralph Kiner made it four years later.
Hodges finished ahead of 12 future Hall of Famers, including former teammates Duke Snider (24.7%) and Pee Wee Reese (35.3%). Snider was elected by the BBWA in 1980 and Reese by the Veterans Committee in 1984. Future Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn received just 2.8% of the vote that year.
Hodges was a fine player, but his early BBWA performance seems out of proportion to his record. Compare Hodges to Duke Snider. It’s hard to imagine a more apples-to-apples comparison. Hodges was a power-hitting first baseman while Snider was a power-hitting center fielder. They were nearly exact contemporaries and teammates for fifteen years. During their careers, Snider slammed 37 more home runs and outhit Hodges .295 to .273. Hard to see how Hodges received more than twice as many votes in 1971, though Snider’s vote totals later caught then surpassed Hodges’s.
I believe two factors explain Hodges’s outsized support. First, Hodges managed the 1969 Miracle Mets to their shocking World Series victory. There is a separate selection process for managers, but Hodges’s managerial success in 1969 kept his name at the top of mind for many. Hodges’s vote total jumped from 24.1% in 1969 to 48.3% in 1970. After reaching 50% in 1971, his vote total slipped to 40.7%.
The second factor came into play in starting in 1972. Roger Kahn’s bittersweet, sentimental bestseller, The Boys of Summer told the story of the 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers. Gil’s sudden death in 1972 at only 47 gave the story a poignant edge. (Jackie Robinson died later that same year.) Hodges’s vote total rose to 57.4% in 1973 and remained above 50% for most of his remaining eligibility period. Brooklyn Dodgers nostalgia likely helped Hodges’s cause. It also helped that Hodges, a devout family man, was well-liked by fans, sportswriters, and fellow players.
The Elevator Pitch
Hodges continued to receive strong support throughout his BBWAA eligibility but couldn’t quite get over the top. Memories of the Boys of Summer and Miracle Mets started to fade. Successful Hall of Fame campaigns often have some sort of elevator pitch. Consider the case of Hack Wilson, who still holds the Major League record for RBIs in a season. Sports Illustrated ran a cover story in 1977 where Wilson, supposedly writing from the Great Beyond (actually, writer Mark Kram) makes his case. Kram (or Wilson) mentions “RBI” eight times. Some other players with long careers can point to hitting some impressive lifetime milestone.
Hodges’ headline statistics don’t exactly scream “Cooperstown.” His lifetime average was .273, nothing special for a first baseman. His 370 homers placed him tenth on the all-time list upon his retirement in 1963. He now ranks 81st. He often placed among the league leaders in home runs and RBIs, but never led the league in a major offensive category.
The Role of Advanced Metrics
The advent of more advanced metrics helped the cause of some players more than others. A commonly used statistic is Wins Above Replacement (WAR). WAR estimates how many additional wins a player produces for his team compared to a borderline (replacement level) player. It differs from the traditional Triple Crown statistics by giving explicit credit for walks, controlling for park effects and whether you played during a hitters’ era or a pitchers’ era, and by taking defense into account. A greater focus on advanced metrics helped the Hall of Fame cases of Bert Blyleven, Ron Santo, and Scott Rolen.
More advanced metrics probably helped Richie Ashburn make the Hall as well. A singles hitter for mostly mediocre teams, Richie was overshadowed by fellow center fielders Willie, Mickey, and “the Duke.” Ashburn’s lifetime batting average of .308 helped with his elevator pitch but sabermetrics made his case even stronger. Ashburn batted leadoff and not only hit for average but also got a lot of walks. He also covered a lot of ground in center field and led the league in outfield putouts nine times. His WAR of 64.3 places Ashburn in solid Hall of Fame territory.
Hodges’ WAR was 43.8. That places him in the range of other Hall of Famers, but plenty of guys not in the Hall scored as high or higher. He places 43rd overall among first baseman and 291st among all position players.
Some other metrics place Hodges higher. Hodges won three Gold Gloves even though the award wasn’t initiated until 1957, when Hodges was already 33. However, his Defensive WAR was -5.4 and was positive only two seasons. The Gold Glove voters could have been wrong. After all, a Gold Glove once went to a Designated Hitter. However, Hodges also led National League first basemen in putouts three times, assists three times, fielding percentage three times, and double plays turned four times. Hodges led the league in another advanced fielding metric, Total Zone Runs, three times. His Total Zone Runs ranks 23rd all-time among first baseman, even though the statistic only goes back to 1953. Hodges was already 29 and in his sixth year as a starter. The weight of the evidence suggests that Hodges was a very good defensive first baseman, notwithstanding his negative defensive WAR.
Hodges also fares well in a relatively new statistic, Championship Win Probability Added. This statistic measures the player’s impact on their team winning the World Series. Hodges led the league in cWPA in 1952 and places 40th all-time. This statistic heavily favors players on pennant contenders, however. In 1952, seven of the top ten in National League cWPA played for the Dodgers. The other three played for the Giants.
Hodges’s BBWAA ballot history may have made the strongest case for Hodges and his ultimate HoF selection. Many of those voters from the early 1970s saw Hodges play. Intangibles like leadership should count for something but are hard to measure by simply looking at stats. Furthermore, every player receiving at least 50% of the BBWAA ballots in any year between 1936 and 2015 eventually made it to the Hall of Fame.[1] Hodges reached 50% or more eleven times. That’s as good an elevator pitch as any.
[1] Curt Schilling, Roger Clemens, and Barry Bonds also reached over 50% on the writers’ ballot but are not the Hall of Fame. However, they exhausted their BBWAA eligibility only in 2022. Please indicate in the comments if anyone else meets this criterion.