Marino Amoruso opens this adoring biography of Gil Hodges by recounting his one childhood meeting with the great Brooklyn Dodger First Baseman, then swinging a bat for the Mets:"Gil, you're my favorite player.""And you're my favorite fan."Music to the ears of any six year old. How many "favorite fans" did Hodges have? After reading this brief book I discovered the answer was simple: "All of them."Gilbert Ray Hodge was born in Princeton, Indiana and raised in Petersburg, Indiana. As a young man, Hodges (nobody is sure when the family name pluralized) was discovered by the Brooklyn Dodgers. After serving his country as a Marine in World War II and earning several Bronze Stars (the reasons for which he never discussed), Hodges returned to Brooklyn to become one of the beloved "Boys of Summer."Hodges may indeed have been the most beloved member of that team. He married a Brooklyn girl, Joan Lombardi, and made his permanent home on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, where he raised his children. Amoruso publishes several family photos in this book, but never invades the privacy of Mrs. Hodges or the Hodges children, so we are left to assess the impact of this family man upon his family just through a series of silent images in which everyone is smiling. One picture IS worth a thousand words. No one is perfect and no one is a paragon, but Gil Hodges clearly tried to be the best man he could be.Hodges was never booed by the notoriously fickle fans at Ebbets Field (or anywhere else), even when he fell into a potentially career-threatening slump in the early 1950s. Instead, the people of Brooklyn sent him religious medals (Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir), prayed for him (Praying for Gil Hodges: A Memoir of the 1955 World Series and One Family's Love of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and cheered him the louder each time he took the field. Brooklyn's Manager, Walt Alston, benched Hodges for a game or two; but, as Amoruso recounts, the problem was solved when Hodges was advised to make a small change to his batting stance.Hodges took the lesson to heart; the experience made him a more effective ballplayer. He became a student of the game, analyzing the styles of both his teammates and opposing players. This habit stood him in good stead when he became a Manager later on.There were many greats on the Brooklyn Dodgers teams of the 1950s, but Hodges was "The Quiet Man." Stoic and silent, but always friendly, Hodges rarely said anything unless it needed to be said, never argued umpires' bad calls, and only became involved in rhubarbs in order to stop them. Several stories are told of how Hodges would separate fighting men by lifting them up by the scruffs of their necks, and (always politely) depositing them in their respective dugouts. Such was his prodigious strength. His hands were huge, and he could swing six bats at once in the on-deck circle. Yet for all his size and power, Hodges never engaged in the time-honored crude habit of "bench jockeying," nor publicly showed anger. He was far more likely to ask after an opposing player's wife and kids and health. As a result, he became one of the most popular men in baseball. His Dodger teammates have nothing but kind words and lauds for his "consistency" and his "stabilizing influence" on that mercurial team.Amoruso wrote the scripts for Baseball - Dem Bums: The History of the Brooklyn Dodgers and The Brooklyn Dodgers, An American Treasure. In THE QUIET MAN he focuses less energy on Hodges' playing days with the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Mets, acknowledges Hodges' managerial contributions to raising the awful AL Washington Senators from their customary last place, and spends much time on Hodges' management of the New York Mets, whom he brought from worst to first in 1969, leading them to their first World Series Championship in 1969. For anybody who remembers, the Summer of 1969 was the summer of the first moon landing, the summer of Woodstock, the year of "Broadway Joe" Namath and the New York Jets, but it very much was the Season of The Mets.Most of his Dodger teammates were surprised when he decided to manage, if only because most baseball managers are loud and sometimes obnoxious. Hodges was anything but. Hodges led by example. He expected his ballplayers to hustle, and pulled them if they didn't. He expected them to follow his rules, and chewed them out (privately) if they did not. He insisted that his team be well-dressed and well-groomed at all times, as befit public figures. He taught his team to think about the game, to work together, and most crucially, to be confident. He commanded respect, not by demanding it but by giving it to others. He rarely raised his voice, so when he did, it was both memorable and a little scary for the young Mets players. To a man, the '69 Mets agree that they were not the most talented team, but that their World Series Championship was due in large part to Gil Hodges' ability to draw the best from each man.Sadly, Gil Hodges died of a massive heart attack in 1972, just two days shy of his 48th birthday. Born into a family with a history of premature death from heart conditions, The Quiet Man held it all inside, and it ultimately killed him. The outpouring of grief for Hodges by fans, former teammates, opponents, indeed everyone, was unprecedented.Shamefully, this fine man who encapsulates all that is best in baseball within himself, is STILL NOT (as of this 2008 writing) a member of the Hall of Fame.In GIL HODGES: THE QUIET MAN, Marino Amoruso gives us a public portrait of one of the finest men to play our national sport. Little truly personal information is disclosed in this book, but that's perhaps as it should be. An intense and private person, and a truly quiet man, Hodges would no doubt appreciate Amoruso's respect for his desire to keep things to himself.