-Gil Hodges was my favorite player growing up. You know that means I’m going to be a little biased here, but I sort of remember something in the back of my head (I’m writing this one cold and not looking it up). As I understood it, Hodges had like 373 home runs when he retired, which, at the time, was the most home runs ever for a right handed hitter. Now, I’m sure Phlavio is diving for the stat book and will get a correction up on this one, but this was the kind of output this guy had when he played. Doesn’t this alone mean you’re supposed to be in the Hall of Fame with all those other right handed hitters that hit LESS home runs than you did? Did I mention he was one of the top defensive first basemen of his era?
-Heath Bell looked great. Seemed to have dropped a few pounds. It took a while for someone to ask him a question at the presser and he screwed up the first answer by saying he wasn’t sure if Miami was a city or a county. He also mentioned as a throwaway that “if Ramirez moves over to third base”… interesting (the question was from that close personal friend of mine, Adam Rubin). He had two opportunities to slam the Mets and didn’t, which I take as a maturing process.
-I’m never sure how all these rumors start. You could simply have two guys standing at the entrance to the ‘new wing’ of the Hotel Anatole, talking about a player, and by the time the third person (who heard the conversation as he walked by) involved is twittering “lot’s of interest in the hall in “so-in-so”. How busy can the Mets be if Adam Rubin is attending the Heath Bell presser? I will tell you this… all the chatter about Daniel Murphy just seemed to start when Bell showed up and bubbled over when his presser was done. Rumors start this way. The real news tends to happen in the hallways of the specific floors talks are going on.
-Hanging out in a hotel lobby isn’t what it used to be (that didn’t come out right…). We didn’t have all these blackberries ten years ago, and there weren’t cell phones when I was in Dallas in 80-82. Everything that happened at conventions back then could be sniffed out in the lobby and hallways of the hotel hosting the conference. Today, you don’t even have to be on the same continent.
-The most talked about item in the lobby was Joe Madden’s new rug. He looked around 30 years old.
Yes, Gil was the RH home run king when he retired. And BTW the guy he supplanted was Ralph Kiner, who was in the booth when Gil, as a Met, did the deed.
ReplyDelete