Gil Hodges Marquee Hall of Fame 2022

He hit 370 home runs, drove in 1,274 runs and reached 20 home runs in eleven straight seasons, from 1949 through 1959. Seven of those years brought at least 100 runs batted in, consecutively from 1949 onward. His best was 1954: 42 home runs, 130 runs batted in, 176 hits.

The glove was the other half of his value. He won the Gold Glove in each of the award's first three years, 1957 through 1959, and played 1,908 games at first base. He was an All-Star eight times, and he was in the lineup for Brooklyn's only World Series title, in 1955, and for the first the Dodgers won in Los Angeles four years later.

He later managed the Mets, and the championship he won in that job is part of his Hall of Fame case. He died two days before his forty-eighth birthday, in 1972, with none of it settled. Fifteen writers' ballots came and went, the best of them 237 votes of 374, before an era committee elected him in 2022.