SI article about Gil Hodges & the H.O.F.

Compare these two players

Player A -- 18 year career -- .273/.359/.487 370 HR/1274 RBI WAR 44.3 OPS+ 120

Player B -- 17 year career -- .271/.374/.488 377 HR/1,103 RBI WAR 52 OPS+ 139

A is Gil Hodges

B is Norm Cash

OK. Norm wasn't as good a first-baseman as Gil, but he wasn't bad.
And I grew up a Tigers' fan, and he was my Mom's favorite.

Two more things.

When you go to Baseball Reference, the top similarity score for Norm Cash is Gil Hodges.

And when people talk about lopsided trades in baseball history, I think it is hard to beat the one that brought Cash to the Tigers. The Tigers got a (many would say very) borderline Hall of Famer for Steve Demeter, who batted .000 in five plate appearances for the Indians.

I agree with jit53 that Norm Cash may have been a better player than Hodges. Either way, they were very close.

So why the ongoing drumbeat for Hodges, whereas nobody bothers to make a HOF argument for Cash? It really is the Boys of Summer effect, I think.

Hodges was a very good player on a great team, and Jackie, Pee Wee, Campy and the Duke are all in, so why not their old buddy Gil? But Hodges performance in and of itself does not make a truly compelling HOF argument. I guess it's a question--should being a very good player on a great team qualify you for the Hall of Fame?

Would anyone care to make that argument? Should being a good player on a great team indeed qualify you for special consideration for a place in the HOF?

60 years ago I was a great baseball fan, more than I have been since. I am now 2 days from being 79 so then I was 18 or
19 and followed the Dodgers closely, not as a fan but as a phenomenon.My feeling then, and I think it was typical, was
that Hodges was not a very good player on a great team but that he was as good , as important as anyone else on the team.
that was then, not now. Someone mentioned his "low" career RBI total. None of the old Dodgers had great RBI totals.
Hodges had 1274 RBI in 7030AB. Snider had 1333 in 7161 AB. Not a lot of difference. I am not trying to make a case for
Hodges inclusion but to explain why the I think the drumbeat exists. And yes, this is apart of the Boys of Summer effect.
Those who want him in are not interested in the records of Mattingly or Cash or anyone else that came later.

I agree with jit53 that Norm Cash may have been a better player than Hodges. Either way, they were very close.

So why the ongoing drumbeat for Hodges, whereas nobody bothers to make a HOF argument for Cash? It really is the Boys of Summer effect, I think.

Hodges was a very good player on a great team, and Jackie, Pee Wee, Campy and the Duke are all in, so why not their old buddy Gil? But Hodges performance in and of itself does not make a truly compelling HOF argument. I guess it's a question--should being a very good player on a great team qualify you for the Hall of Fame?

Would anyone care to make that argument? Should being a good player on a great team indeed qualify you for special consideration for a place in the HOF?

The argument is that it's a Hall of Fame, not strictly a Hall of Merit, and it's a museum regarding baseball history. Thus, to the extent that a very good - but not quite great -- player played key roles on a dynasty, and/or served as one of the faces of a franchise, they play a more vital role in telling the story of baseball than a well-traveled journeyman. For a contemporary example -- Andy Pettitte's career numbers are not quite as good as Kevin Brown's, but if you're telling the story of baseball in the 1990s/ 2000's, Pettitte plays a more significant role. For purposes of a Hodges contemporary, Rocky Colavito had almost identical WAR, slightly more homers, had 3 top-five MVP finishes, but I think it's reasonable to say that Hodges had more of a historical impact. (Colavito was on the ballot twice, and got 0.5% or less each time).

I'm not a strict adherent to this principle, but I think that's the underlying rationale of some voters who focus more on a "place in history" than straight ranking by Wins Above Replacement or other numeric thresholds.