The Catholic faith of Gil Hodges

The inspiring Catholic faith of Gil Hodges: A legacy on and off the field

Gil Hodges, a revered figure in the history of Major League Baseball, is celebrated for his prowess as a player and manager. As a cornerstone of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ championship teams and the mastermind behind the 1969 Miracle Mets, Hodges carved a legendary status in America’s pastime. Yet, beyond the box scores and the accolades, Hodges’s Catholic faith served as the quiet but powerful force guiding his life. His spirituality inspired not only his approach to the game but also his relationships, leadership, and service to others. This essay explores how Gil Hodges’s Catholic faith influenced his life and legacy, shaping him into a role model both on and off the field.

A faith forged in humility and hard work

Gilbert Ray Hodges was born on April 4, 1924, in Princeton, Indiana, into a devout Catholic family. The values instilled by his upbringing - hard work, humility, and an unwavering faith in God - became hallmarks of his character. Hodges grew up during the Great Depression, an era when resilience and reliance on faith were essential. His family’s dedication to Catholic traditions laid the foundation for his moral compass and his future success.

Hodges’s early life mirrored the simplicity and determination often associated with small-town America. He attended Mass regularly and found solace in prayer, practices that would remain integral throughout his life. When World War II interrupted his budding baseball career, Hodges served his country as a Marine in the Pacific Theater. There, his faith became a source of strength, helping him endure the challenges of war and deepen his reliance on God.

Faith on the field: A model of integrity and leadership

Hodges’s faith became a distinguishing trait in his baseball career, setting him apart not only as an exceptional first baseman but also as a person of impeccable integrity. Joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in the late 1940s, Hodges quickly emerged as a fan favorite. His on-field achievements were extraordinary - he was an eight-time All-Star, a three-time Gold Glove winner, and a key contributor to the Dodgers’ 1955 World Series championship. Yet, it was his character that truly endeared him to teammates and fans alike.

Known for his quiet demeanor and sportsmanship, Hodges embodied Catholic virtues such as humility and perseverance. He refrained from retaliating against opponents, even when provoked, and held himself to the highest ethical standards. Hodges’s contemporaries often remarked on his sense of fairness and calm under pressure, traits that reflected his deep faith.

Hodges’s spirituality also informed his approach to teamwork and leadership. As a team captain, he led by example, encouraging younger players to work hard and stay disciplined. His commitment to prayer before games underscored his belief that success was a gift from God, not merely the result of personal effort. Hodges’s faith-filled perspective helped him navigate the pressures of professional sports while remaining grounded.



A faith that transcended the game

Gil Hodges’s Catholic faith was not confined to the diamond. Off the field, he lived out the Gospel through his devotion to family, community, and acts of charity. He married his wife, Joan Lombardi, in the Church in 1948, and their marriage became a testament to the sacrament's enduring strength. Together, they raised four children, instilling in them the same values of faith and morality that had shaped Hodges’s own life. Joan passed away in 2022 at the age of 95, 50 years after Gil's passing. She lived just long enough to see Gil inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum that same year, 2022.

Hodges’s commitment to service extended to his local parish and beyond. He participated in community outreach programs and supported various charitable causes, including youth baseball initiatives and veterans’ organizations. Hodges’s actions reflected the Catholic principle of serving others, demonstrating that his faith was not just a private matter but a public commitment to doing good.

As a manager, Hodges brought his faith-informed leadership to the New York Mets, culminating in their improbable 1969 World Series victory. His calm and steady guidance inspired a team that had long been seen as underdogs. Hodges treated his players with dignity and respect, fostering an environment of trust and mutual support. His managerial style, rooted in his Catholic values, transformed a struggling franchise into champions and left a lasting legacy.

A legacy of faith and inspiration

Gil Hodges’s life was a testament to the power of faith to inspire greatness. His Catholic values shaped him into a man of integrity, resilience, and compassion, leaving a profound impact on all who knew him. Whether as a player, manager, or family man, Hodges exemplified the virtues of humility, perseverance, and service, proving that faith is not a barrier to success but a foundation for it.

In the years since his passing in 1972 of a heart attack at the age of 47 in West Palm Beach, Florida, Hodges’s legacy has continued to inspire. Fans and players alike remember him not only for his baseball achievements but also for his moral example. His induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2022 was a long-overdue recognition of his contributions to the game, but for those who knew him, Hodges’s true greatness lay in his character.

For Catholics and sports enthusiasts, Gil Hodges stands as a reminder that faith and professional excellence are not mutually exclusive. His life invites us to reflect on how our own beliefs can guide us to live with purpose and integrity. In an era often marked by cynicism and self-interest, Hodges’s story is a beacon of hope, showing that faith, humility, and hard work remain timeless virtues.

Conclusion

Gil Hodges’s Catholic faith was the cornerstone of his life, influencing his achievements on the baseball field and his relationships off it. Through his unwavering commitment to God and others, Hodges demonstrated the profound impact of a life lived in accordance with faith. His legacy endures not just in the record books but in the hearts of those who admire his example. For Hodges, baseball was more than a game - it was a platform to live out his faith, inspire others, and glorify God. In doing so, he left a lasting imprint on the world, one that continues to inspire generations.

Welcome to the 2022-2023 school year!

Welcome to the 2022-2023 school year! I can't believe, and I'm sure you're with me on this one, how quickly summer went! I'm scratching my head here, still trying to figure it out. Perhaps even more perplexing for me is that we're in the year 2022, quickly headed into 2023. I'll be turning the big 4-0 later on this year. Time sure does fly. I remember the 1999-2000 school year like it was yesterday. I was a junior in high school, and I remember all the fear and anxiety across the globe about machines, ATMs, clocks, calendars, etc. possibly not working when we reached the year 2000. Now here we are, nearly 23 years later. Wow.

Oh, well. In any case, here we are. A new school year. A new start of sorts.

First day of school of 2022-2023 for me, September 1. Celebrating with my very first Yeti for hot, industrial-strength coffee all day! Who’s ready to learn and grow?! Let’s do this! Cheers, all!

 

My summer went well. Back in late June, I took a stroll through my church's cemetery for the very first time, and I was genuinely amazed at the centuries-old history and the scenic beauty that is present there.

In early August, I went on a trip to Door County, Wisconsin with my parents for a few days. I can't even remember the last time I was up there, it had been so long. We stayed at the Open Hearth Lodge in Sister Bay. A very nice place. We really enjoyed our stay there. For those of you not very familiar with Door County, it's that "left thumb" of Wisconsin on the map. It runs along Lake Michigan. It's about 2.5 hours or so from the Milwaukee area. Door County's economy is heavily dependent on tourism and the manufacturing and marketing of specialty foods and beverages. Beautiful state parks, county parks, beaches, shops, restaurants, wineries, farms, and other tourist attractions dot the county. While Door County is home to a diverse variety of farming and agricultural goods, it is perhaps most famous for its cherries. Door County's famous cherries are put into anything and everything from pies and other baked goods, to jams, salsas, wines, even coffees and liquors. We came home with bags of gourmet munchies and coffees.

Here's a picture of an alpaca I took at the Wisconsin State Fair, which takes place each year in early August. I love both alpacas and the Wisconsin State Fair. Usually, I'll go to the Fair multiple times per year. I'll usually buy advanced tickets at a discount, and I love to just walk the grounds, people watch, and check out some of the bands and vendor booths without any particular agenda. This year, however, I only made it to the Fair twice. You can check out more alpaca pictures at my Instagram page.

Also in August, I spent a good amount of time building out some new pages on this blog to offer even more personal finance resources for students and teachers. It was a fun project to work on, and it's a subject I'm particularly passionate about.

Near the end of August, I went up to Appleton with my mom for a cousin's wedding. We stayed at the Hilton Appleton Paper Valley hotel, located in the heart of downtown, for two nights. I can't remember the last time I was up to Appleton, either. What a happening college town. A lot to see and do at any given time. On Friday night, local car enthusiasts and car clubs cruised downtown in front of our hotel in their classic, muscle, hot rod, and modified cars. That was fun to see. On Saturday morning, we checked out a large farmers market taking place downtown in front of our hotel. It stretched for blocks, and they closed the streets for it. A lot of variety, anything from produce and baked goods to coffee and specialty foods. And then of course, there was the wedding, the very reason why we were up there! That was a lot of fun. I hadn't seen my cousins and other family in a number of years. It was a good time to reconnect and recommit, and we all vowed to keep in touch and see each other more often. On Sunday morning, I went to Mass at St. Joseph Parish, right next door to our hotel. A beautiful church, it was built in 1867. The church also has a prayer garden with a statue of Blessed Solanus Casey, and I appreciated the opportunity to pray there for a while, as well.

Throughout the summer, I spent a little time here and there building my baseball card collection. The sports card market is back on fire, and I'm feeling like a kid in a candy store after having visited some card shows and shops this summer. I'm having a blast reliving my days collecting as a kid!

Finally, I continued throughout the summer working on both my Ph.D. dissertation studies and my spiritual life since rediscovering my Roman Catholic faith back in December after nearly 20 years.

Before I forget, here are a couple silly breaking news headlines I created through a fun tool at ClassTools.net over the summer.

Well, here's to another successful school year! Wishing you all the very best! Don't squander this precious opportunity, this precious time you have right now to truly learn, grow, and develop. Here's to you. Happy 2022-2023!

How was your summer? Did you go on any fun trips? Did you learn anything new? How is the new school year treating you so far? I'd love to hear all about it, so feel free to share in the comments section below!

Sports card market on fire

The sports card market appears to be coming back strong.

I've been seeing occasional articles and hearing things popping up in the news during the last year or so suggesting that the overall market for sports cards, which had largely been in the dumps for many years, is all of a sudden back on fire. I know I've been seeing a resurgence in card and memorabilia shows here in the Milwaukee area. The pandemic, apparently, has a lot to do with this sudden and exciting revival. Several factors are at play here, from what I've been hearing and reading: Older collectors are rediscovering the hobby, getting back to collecting players that they grew up with. Meanwhile, these older collectors are getting younger ones, today's kids, interested in collecting. And - the pandemic has caused the factories to produce less new cards, so values for cards that are coming out now are instantly surging because their print runs are much shorter.

In this post, I'll discuss some of the main trends and currents happening in the market at the moment, as well as offer some tips on how to be careful with your money. These are all based on both my own recent research and experiences in the marketplace, as well as on informal conversations I've been occasionally having with collectors, dealers, show organizers, and shop owners around the Milwaukee area. Fortunately, what I've been researching and experiencing myself seems to be largely in line with what's been coming up in these discussions with others, and vice-versa, so hopefully we can present a pretty accurate picture here for you of what's going on. I've been warmly embracing this renaissance of the hobby for the last few months, checking out a few shows here and there, along with a shop near my home. These are exciting times for the sports card market, indeed, and I've truly been like a kid in a candy store. It's all bringing back fun memories from my childhood.

What I don't address in this post is the subject of graded cards, which could easily take up a whole separate post of its own. That may be a future project here.

Some 1980s and 1990s card values are suddenly on the rise - I grew up in the 80s and 90s. I mostly collected baseball cards as a kid, and that's still true today. Baseball is my #1 love, but I also got into basketball and football cards to some extent, as well. The problem with all cards produced during this era is that there were far too many made. Even today, in 2022, you can walk into virtually any card shop, and you'll find tons of unopened packs, boxes, and sets of cards from this era, still factory sealed as if they came off the assembly line just yesterday (I wouldn't recommend testing out the 30+ year-old chewing gum, though). These shops can't give this stuff away, there's just so much of it. Don't get me wrong. They're still fun to open and pick through. I just bought a total of 30 packs between 1990 Fleer and 1990 Score baseball a couple weeks ago at a local shop near my home. I spent a total of $15.00, or just $0.50 per pack. I had a lot of fun going through them, and I found a good number of star cards to hold on to - Ryan, Ripken, Griffey Jr., Maddux, Glavine, Yount, Molitor, Bonds, Clemens, Biggio, Sandberg, Gwynn, Ozzie Smith, etc. They're not worth a whole lot, because there are so many copies out there, but they're still worth a few bucks. But something interesting is happening in the 80s/90s realm right now. Although the supply is enormous, there's a resurgence in demand, driven largely by collectors in my age group that grew up with this stuff. Additionally, more and more players from this era have been entering the Hall of Fame in recent years, further driving up overall values and interest.

Beware of the highly-volatile fluctuations in values of today's modern cards - I've heard this from many of the dealers, shop owners, and collectors I've been talking to. Today's kids and their parents, especially, should beware, since it's largely today's kids that are collecting today's newest cards. Makes sense. There's a lot of betting taking place on the values of today's cards, led largely by the efforts of Wall Street investors (literally - a lot of these guys are stock brokers or day traders) who have entered the hobby looking for the next big investment or business opportunity. As a result of their involvement in the hobby, there's a lot of speculation going on with these newer cards. And the average collector - the average kid and family - can easily find themselves stuck in the middle of this Wall Street -style pricing war, and find themselves out a lot of money in the end. These investor types are trying to bank on what they're betting will be tomorrow's new superstars. They're scarfing up as many cards as they can get their hands on, and they're willing to fork out big, big bucks for them. As a result, they're driving up values across the board, taking some of them to insane, unrealistic heights - thousands and thousands of dollars per card. There's no doubt that people are making some serious money on all of this, including the occasionally-lucky working class kid and family that just happens to be holding one or more of these cards. But many who have been in the hobby for years are seeing a bubble ready to pop. The problem is that these cards, whose values have been artificially driven up to tens of thousands of dollars in some cases, can easily sink down to nothing tomorrow with an injury, scandal, or lost championship.

If you're collecting newer cards, then, it's best to apply some old-fashioned investing principles, since you're likely going toe-to-toe with big Wall Street money on the other end of the deal. For starters, buy low and sell high. If a card is already priced unrealistically high and you don't own it yet, it's best to stay away from it at that price. Again, one injury, scandal, or lost championship can bring it down to zero in a blink of the eye. Also, always assume that your collection is worth nothing until you have actual cash in hand. Values on paper don't necessarily mean anything. And that goes for anything you may own - cars, homes, antiques, coins, etc. You need to find a buyer who's willing to pay for your item in order to turn it into cash.

For a much safer bet, true vintage (1970s and prior) continues to be where it's really at - Anything 1970s and older is usually a safe bet. These cards don't have the overproduction problems of the 80s and 90s, and they don't have the stock market -style speculation problems like the new stuff. Because these players are long retired, deceased, already in their sport's hall of fame, etc., their careers and stats are firmly set in stone, for all eternity. There's no fear of these athletes ending up on the injured list today, or losing a championship tomorrow. Everything they did or failed to do is fully known to us. For the ones still living, barring any future scandal or crime they may find themselves in, there's really nothing they can do now that will make their card values fluctuate. And barring any sudden surge in demand for a particular year/player (living or deceased), which would be pretty doubtful, these values are going to be consistently stable. Now, there's both an upside and a downside to these stable values. The upside is that we shouldn't have to worry about these values ever falling much. On the flip side, however, they're most likely not going to ever climb much, either. They're largely stuck for good in a kind of equilibrium. Therefore, those who are devoted to collecting vintage are usually in it for reasons other than pure investment/monetary gain. Perhaps they just want to be able to say they own cards of true, true legends of the game. Maybe they really enjoy the artwork and layout of certain cards and sets - there were some really beautiful, visually-appealing sets that came out in the 1950s, for example, and during the tobacco card era of the 1880s-1910s. Some of these collectors may be strictly into collecting vintage team sets and/or hometown favorites. And still some may have the goal of building complete sets from their own childhood years.

Do you collect sports cards? Is this post pretty accurate at the moment? Why or why not? What advice and resources would you offer our readers here? Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts, observations, tips, and experiences in the comments section below. We'd love to hear from you!