Ralph Hodgin getting lots of extra innings in life
Ralph Hodgin, playing for the Chicago White Sox in 1948, remembers standing near the dugout in old Cleveland Stadium and hearing a voice yelling from the stands. It was Al Lochra thanking him for the free ticket.
Lockra, who had been stationed at the Greensboro's Army Air Corps base during World War II, had met Hodgin's niece here and married her.
The couple moved to Cleveland, but they soon moved to Greensboro, where Lochra began a long career with the public schools and Guilford Technical Community College, where he still works part-time though he's officially retired.
Hodgin always returned when the season was over to his native Guilford County. He had grown up on a farm near Piedmont Triad International Airport.
At 91, he and Red Hayworth, a former St. Louis Browns (now Baltimore Oriole) player, are believed to be the oldest ex-major leaguers in the Greensboro area.
He and Lochra have vivid members of that '48 game. Hodgin believes the legendary Satchel Paige may have been pitching for the Indians, which would later win the American League pennant.
Lochra remembers Hodgin, a left fielder, hitting the ball three times that night, but it was either caught or picked up on the bounce. Hodgin was out all three times.
What stands out in Lochra's mind was a Cleveland batter hitting a ball deep to left field. It was going, going ... and just before a radio announcer could say gone, Hodgin, running at the fence full speed, reached up and robbed the batter of a homer.
"He kept twisting and turning around and he caught the ball at the fence," Lochra says, adding the catch was so sensational Cleveland fans applauded Hodgin even though he was in the enemy's uniform.
Hodgins laughs. It was unusual for the Cleveland fans or those anywhere to appaud a player for the opposing team.
Lochra remembers that Hodgin rarely stuck out. His batting average in 1943 was a hefty .314 and .295 in 1944.
Judging by that catch in Cleveland and his respectable .266 batting average that season, he had a solid year for the Sox. But the team dumped him. He spent the last three years of his career playing for Sacremento in the Triple A Pacific League. He came home and managed the Reidsville Luckies for several years in the old Carolina League.
Later, he worked for a Greensboro trucking company for 30 years, rising to terminal manager.
He gets a pension from Major League Baseball. He said the most he ever made in a season was $15,000. That's what some major leaguers today make playing a single game, and many of those lack Hodgin's batting statistics.
Since his wife's death, he has lived alone on Farmington Drive, behind Smith High School.
He keeps his hand - literally - in baseball by signing baseball cards collectors send to him.
A Boston sports writer called him last week wanting to know if he was the guy on the White Sox bench in the 1940s that kept yelling at a Boston Red Sox pitcher over some perceived injustice.
The umpire walked over to the dugout and gave Hodgin the thumb - meaning he was tossed from the game. As Hodgin was entering the club house, "the rest of the bench was behind me," he says.
The umpire had given them the heave ho, too, with the stipulation that if Chicago needed substitutes, they could be summoned from the lockeroom.
Hodgin insists he wasn't the one hollering.
His voice remains strong. He still drives and has become an Atlanta Braves fan from years of watching the team on TV.
The game hasn't changed too much, he says, except for the pitchers, who hurl every fifth day instead of four and rarely complete nine innings even if performing well. A special mid-reliever comes in and replaces him. In Hodgin's day, starting pitchers were expected to go the entire nine innings, unless the opposing team got too many hits and runs off him.
But he enjoys watching the game, even with its changes, including the commercials that make the inning changes seem like eternity. In his day, teams had about 60 seconds to hustle off or on the field between innings.