Mort is currently writing a biography, Gil Hodges: The Man Behind the Miracle, which will be published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2009.
The following essay describes the challenges he faced while researching Hodges' life.
Bridging the Blue/Red Divide
In the spring of 2006, I traveled from my home in Princeton, New Jersey to Petersburg, Indiana in search of Gil Hodges. Though he’s been dead for thirty-four years, I found him. More surprising -- considering I grew up in Brooklyn and my parents taught me to vote early, often, and Democratic -- I now have friends in a red state.
I’m writing a biography of Gil Hodges, the legendary Brooklyn Dodger first baseman and manager of the 1969 World Champion New York Mets. Hoping to illuminate his early years, I planned a visit to the rural, coal-mining town where he grew up. After a few phone calls from my Princeton, New Jersey home, I learned that the person to speak to in Petersburg about Hodges was Randy Harris, the former mayor. When I phoned Randy, I could tell he shared my admiration for the kind, self-effacing man.
Like most born-and-bred New Yorkers, the heartland was just a place to change planes on the way to California. But this past spring, after my plane landed in Indianapolis, I rented a car and drove south. As I approached Petersburg, the terrain grew hillier. The air occasionally reeked of sulfur. And I wondered how the locals would take to a Jew mining for facts about their favorite son, a devout Catholic.
That evening, Randy took me to dinner at an Amish restaurant. After saying grace, he wasted no time raising his second favorite subject after Gil – politics.
“Let me tell you the four bedrock Republican principles,” Randy said. “We believe in right-to-life, public-school prayer, the right to bear arms, and the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman. Mort, you seem like a man with values. Aren’t those the principles your folks taught you?”
I stared at Randy across the plastic tablecloth. His plate was piled high with pork and butter-soaked vegetables. A voice in my head said, Toto, you’re not in Princeton any more. I took a deep breath. Can I tell this guy I don’t agree with a word he says and still maintain good relations? He’s gone out of his way to arrange a meeting the next morning at Joe Mama’s Pizza Parlor with a dozen people who knew Hodges before WWII. “All I can tell you is that when I was a kid my parents referred to gay people [in Yiddish] as fagelahs.” I could tell from the look on his face Randy got my point. Just then, the white-capped Amish waitress broke the silence between us by asking if we wanted more iced tea. We never talked politics again.
But for the next week, Randy drove me all over Pike County to interview people who were too frail to make it to Joe Mama’s. He even offered to drive me to Evansville if I needed to attend synagogue. He allowed me to use his office as my base of operations and I ignored the signed Richard Nixon photo - addressed, To Randy - that hung there.
The people of Petersburg all went out of their way to help me find Bud (everyone in Petersburg still calls Hodges “Bud,” his childhood nickname). The Harris family discovered letters Bud wrote to Father Vieck, the local Catholic priest. John Drof spent hours carefully turning the brittle pages of old copies of the Petersburg Press searching for Bud’s American Legion box-scores. I slept in a spare room on Donna and Steve Mikels’ farm. When I saw that the version of the scriptures they used was called the Hebrew Bible, Princeton and Petersburg felt closer.
Someone took me to dinner every night that week. One evening, in the oldest restaurant in Indiana, The Log Inn, with a large group of people at the table, Randy asked me if I wanted to lead them in grace. I couldn’t bring myself to say Our Lord Jesus Christ - as I had heard before meals all week – and I was uncertain if I could say grace without using those words. I respectfully declined. Mildred Hisgen Benjamin (like Bud, Petersburg High Class of ‘41) leaned over and whispered, “A little grace never hurts.”
Since my return home, I speak to Randy regularly, reporting on my progress. During a particularly frustrating stretch, I told him my greatest fear was that I owed the people of Petersburg more than I could deliver. My first book hadn’t yet found a publisher, and I felt I was in way over my head. Randy told me not to worry. “Mort,” he said, “He never gives us more than we can handle.”
“Amen,” I whispered.
[This piece originally appeared in slightly different form in the Princeton Packet on 9/19/06.]
As we head towards yet another barrage of personal attacks leading up to Election Day, I wonder if the political differences polarizing our nation couldn’t be softened by the establishment of a student-exchange program between blue and red municipalities. The ultimate beneficiary of such a program may very well be the democratic process that sustains us all.
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