WAIT 'TIL NEXT YEAR - An Ode to Gil Hodges

 

WAIT ‘TIL NEXT YEAR

An Ode to Gil Hodges

Yesterday was opening day and baseball is again on my TV screen.  Spring is in the air (well, summer here in LA – it was 90 degrees!), but it was cold and damp in New York and, as the Yankees played the Tigers, you could see the pitchers’ breath…

Ah, baseball in New York.  The game’s not the same for me since I moved to LA.  I no longer live minutes away from Shea (yeh, I know, Shea’s gone… but NuShea is right next door) and it’s harder to walk down memory lane and cling to the Mets as a substitute for Brooklyn in a town where baseball fans leave the stadium in the 7^th inning to ‘beat the traffic’...even if it’s a tie game!!!  Really!!!  The LA Dodgers just don’t cut it for me.  I know the Dodger players didn’t betray me – the owners did – but it ain’t Dodger blue unless it’s Dodger blue in Brooklyn.

If you grew up in NY in the ‘50s and rooted for Brooklyn, “Wait ‘til next year” was your mantra.  It was a heartbreaking agony as I sat on my father's lap while he read aloud the sports pages … the pain of being a fan relived through the vivid prose of the sportswriter, back when sports writers still dabbled in “vivid.”

Finally, in l955, we were vindicated.  A miracle had happened!  “Next year” had come.  The aging Bums, led by Robinson, Snider Campanella, Reese and Hodges beat the Bronx Bombers.  My father’s Bums – my Bums – were champions of the world!  We Brooklyn fans went nuts.  We danced in the streets (literally), threw block parties (literally) and swam in ticker tape (not literally).  The sportswriters around the country vividly captured the glory and I was so enraptured by their writing, I didn’t know if I wanted to be a Dodger or write about them.  I wanted to run like Jackie and write like Red Smith.

Years later, after my father died, I thought how proud he would be to know that his beloved Duke, Pee Wee, Jackie, Roy and Gil were immortalized in the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Wait.  No Gil!!!  How frustrated he’d be that the quiet, talented, steady, solid, loyal Gil Hodges – the player who was NEVER booed in Ebbets Field – wasn’t with his teammates in the ‘Hall.’  I can still hear him whispering in my ear, “Don’t worry about first, honey, Gil’s there.  Like Coop in 'High Noon,' he’ll stand tall and never let you down.”

Now, I was a mere child when the Bums abandoned its fans for palm trees, but my love for the team has never subsided.  The Boys of Summer were my heroes.  I had all their baseball cards.  They were living legends – and every year after he was eligible, I waited for Gil to enter Cooperstown but, like so many baseball seasons of my childhood (except ’55), I re-entered a “wait ‘til next year” existence.  Am I ever going to see a ‘55 miracle again? 

A couple of years ago my hopes were heightened when Roger Kahn wrote about this injustice… but, as a Nathan’s hot dog was steaming on my stove that year, its spicy Coney Island smell making my mouth water as the new inductees’ names were announced, it became apparent that not even Kahn could convince the voters to let Gil in the “Hall.”  I was so heartbroken, I lost my appetite.

And here we are in 2011 and Gil is still forgotten.  Where was the man who revolutionized play at first base and, during his 18 year career, averaged 30 home runs and 100 RBIs for TEN consecutive years, had a lifetime batting average of .273, w/ 370 home runs--  the man who turned the “Amazin’ Mets” into world champions… the man who has schools named after him – even a bridge!!!  Where was Gil Hodges?!  It’s not fair!  How often does a girl have to say, “Wait ‘til next year?”

The Baseball Hall of Fame rules state that “voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.”  Gil Hodges had all those qualities.  He was a man of character who exemplified what’s good about America – what’s good about us.  How can a player w/ so much ability to inspire such faith NOT be in the Hall?  As debates over Peter Rose still wage and debates that I’m sure will arise when all the ‘steroid-ed up’ home-run record breakers become eligible, I can only hope that next year’s voting panel remembers how much talent, class and integrity Gil Hodges brought to the game of baseball as a man and as a player.

Wait ‘til next year!

(DON'T WORRY DADDY) I'LL NEVER ROOT FOR THE YANKEES

This weekend Richard was watching the Yankees on TV in a pre-season game and, sadly, this weekend Duke Snider died.  As I mourn “my” boys of summer slipping away along w/ my youth, I thought I’d post a baseball memory piece I wrote over a decade ago for the New York Daily News sports section:

(DON’T WORRY DADDY)

I’LL NEVER ROOT FOR THE YANKEES

I came out of the womb thinking women were smarter than men.  There I was, ready to be born, when a male intern instructed my mother to cross her legs until her obstetrician could be found.  The result was an out-of-body experience for her and a difficult breech birth for me.

So, you think that’s where I got all my anger toward men?  Well, even I don’t hold a grudge that long!  Ever pragmatic, I chalked it up as one of life’s unsolved mysteries, until the night I was jolted awake by an epiphany – baseball.

In the dark I stared at the ceiling as an announcer’s voice echoed in my ears. “Sixth inning. 2-0 Brooklyn… Berra waits for Podres’ next pitch … CRACK … it’s a long, high fly ball to left … it’s going, going…. NO!  NO!  He caught it.  Sandy Amoros just made the catch of a lifetime!  What a heartbreak for the Yankees!  What a glorious day for the Dodgers!”

Childhood memories flashed on my bedroom ceiling like a home movie.  There I was, a little girl from Queens running home from school, my mother yelling out the window, “Brooklyn won!”  When my father came home from the game, we danced in the streets, my baby brother waving his Dodger pennant.  There was joy in Mudville, as my father’s heroes became mine: Robinson, Reese, Snider, Campanella, Hodges…

The following spring, joy deserted Mudville when I raced into my father’s arms crying.  “They” wouldn’t let me try out for Little League just because I was a girl!  I begged him to change the rules.  A liberated man for that era, he told me things would change and I could be or do anything I wanted… someday.  Then, as he watched the innocence fade from my eyes, replaced with the gestating look of a feminist, he held me closer and said, “Promise me you will always love baseball.”

One night sitting at the dinner table listening to my Brooklyn-Finnish grandparents and father loudly debate politics (a “Finnish” tradition in our house), I blurted out… “They can’t trade Jackie Robinson!”  Silence.  I turned to my father hoping he could fix it, but one look told me he couldn’t.  With my jaw set stubbornly I announced, “Men are so stupid!”  That belief hardened like cement the morning my heartbroken father read me the day’s headline:  “Bums Exit Brooklyn.”  To comfort him, I solemnly vowed I’d never root for the Yankees.

It suddenly dawned on me that throughout my young life, I’d always had one man who understood, who kept a balance between disappointment and hope… even if he couldn’t fix everything.  But I couldn’t hold on to that memory just as I couldn’t hold onto my father forever. 

I stood very still, dressed in my best Sunday clothes, my braids peeking out of my hand-knit bonnet.  My mother, wearing her black ‘dress’ coat, held my hand.  My brother, in his winter Sunday school suit, held her other hand.  My grandparents, bundled up in overcoats, sat on bridge chairs.  It was mid-March and the many bright floral arrangements stood in defiance against the bleak, half-frozen gravesite.  My brother left my mother’s side and placed his tiny hands squarely on the coffin. 

“Don’t worry daddy,” he whispered “we’ll never root for the Yankees.” (Finns are myopic people… probably because they come from too little sunshine and too much vodka, or maybe it’s just genetic.)

Without the Dodgers and without my father, summer and life would never be the same.  I took up tennis.

Years later when I met my writing partner, baseball re-entered my life.  He was wearing a Yankee cap.  I instantly became a devoted Met fan.  Despite the fact that he was a fanatic Yankee fan, we became partners, even got married and, like the Dodgers, deserted New York and moved to L.A.  Nobody’s perfect.

That first summer when the Mets came west, I found myself, the girl from Queens, sitting in Dodger Stadium talking to a Giants fan from the Bronx.  He dared me:  You wanna meet Roy Campanella or not?  Never able to refuse a challenge from a man, I agreed.  At the VIP level he turned on his Bronx charm and persuaded the security guard to let me through the cyclone fence.  As the gate closed behind me, he yelled, “Say, hey.”  Then, there he was looking frail, but beautiful.  Roy Campanella!  As he approached me in his wheelchair, I struggled to keep back the tears, remembering how devastated my father was after Campy’s career-ending accident.  Campy noticed a pin on my jacket.  “See you’re a Yankee fan,” he said. 

Horrified, I looked down and smiled.  I had thrown on my husband’s jacket.  “Never!” I told him and then showed him my vintage Brooklyn Dodger pin fastened securely to my tee shirt. 

“Ah, so you’re really a Dodger fan,” he continued.

I shook my head, “You broke my heart when you left Brooklyn.”

He nodded and asked, “But you still love baseball?”

I smiled again, as it struck me for the first time in years that I’ll always love baseball.  Now that Campy is gone, I treasure the fact that I got to tell him that.  I felt happy.  At one with the world.  Safe with the memories of my father, who taught me so many things in those few timeless summers.

Of course, I still believed women were smarter than men (Gil Hodges is still not in the Hall of Fame!).  But things were changing.  Girls can play in Little League and women were getting more respect.  My father knew they would… (He would have loved Hillary Rodham Clinton, three names and all)… And, at that moment, I realized why baseball made me a feminist.  Baseball introduced me to the inequities of the sexes, to prejudice, injustice and heartbreak.  How can you not love a game that did all that?

But I’ll still never root for the Yankees.