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The Gil Hodges mural in downtown Petersburg will be up dated next week to reflect his Hall of Fame induction on Saturday at Cooperstown.

The Gil Hodges mural in downtown Petersburg will be up dated next week to reflect his Hall of Fame induction on Saturday at Cooperstown.

There might not be a lot that connects Brooklyn and Petersburg, but the strongest thread is soon-to-be Hall of Fame baseball player Gil Hodges.

And for anyone who has ever driven through downtown Petersburg, Hodges is remembered through a 52’ mural painted by Petersburg artist Randy Hedden, who now lives and works in Arizona.

The Brooklyn Dodger legend played 22 years and was also the manager of the Amazing Mets of 1969 and will be inducted into Cooperstown on Saturday, as he was selected by the Golden Era committee this year and will finally join teammates, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider, Sandy Kofax, all representing the Dodger Blue from that era.

Hodges passed away in April 1972 as the Mets manager just before the season. Although born in Princeton, the family moved to Petersburg when Hodges was seven. He was a star four-sport athlete at Petersburg High School, earning a combined seven varsity letters in football, baseball, basketball and track.

According to online sources, Hodges signed with the Dodger in 1943 and appeared in one game for the team as a third baseman that year. Hodges entered the United States Marine Corps during World War II after having participated in its Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program at Saint Joseph’s. He served in combat as an anti-aircraft gunner in the 16th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion, participating in the battles of Tinian and Okinawa, and received a Bronze Star Medal with Combat “V” for heroism under fire.

He was a member of the 1955 Dodgers, known in retrospect as the “Boys of Summer” with the only championship won in Brooklyn, and ended up with 370 home runs.

Hedden is also a Petersburg High School graduate and use to cut Hodges’ mother’s grass when he was in high school. He attended VU before joining the Army, but said he never attended art school and is entirely self- taught when he started painting in 1973. He has been on America’s Got Talent, and opened numerous concerts with his speed painting for the likes of Darius Rucker, Larry the Cable Guy, Travis Tritt and the Charlie Daniels Band several times. He was also done work to the Red Skelton Center in Vincennes.

Hedden was commissioned in 2008 to paint a 52’ by 16’ mural by former mayors Jon Craig and Jack Kinman, along with a group of friends and classmates of Hodges.

“We meet in a room in the back of the courthouse with several of Gil’s classmates and began to talk about it in the fall of 2008. We had to pick the right wall and they changed it once or twice before picking the final place. The mural is MDO (a type of marine plywood) with Bondo and acrylic primer. You could throw in the water and it wouldn’t damage it,” he said. “The whole thing was then painted with artists’ acrylic paint before being covered in clear coat.

“It was painted in my studio in Arizona and then we drove to Colorado before driving it to Petersburg to assemble the panels at the site. Each panel is attached with about 12-16 screws. It took about six weeks to paint.”

One of the most interesting things about the mural is the fans pained into it in the background.

“I was originally just going to use generic fans, but we ended up using local people. It was $100 a face and that ended up helping to defray some of the costs. However, one of the biggest benefactors was Wayne Mallotte, who covered a big part of the remaining costs. Another thing most people don’t know is that the catcher in the picture is most likely Joe Garagiola of the Cardinals. I meet him and we talked about it and he was pretty sure he was the capture in the picture.

“Gil was a big deal to the people of Petersburg. Back when Gil played, there was a place called Thomas Cleaners in town and they would post his daily statistics in the window. Randy Harris also has a room in the café dedicated to Hodges memorabilia (just around the corner from the mural). “

On July 30th Hedden will be part of a group updating the mural with a plaque; he will also be giving a speed painting demonstration of Hodges at Bosse Field during the seventh inning of a game there on July 29th, Gil Hodges Day.

In a press release from Jon Craig, he added The updates will include the addition of the National Baseball Hall of Fame logo and a plaque commemorating the Dodger and Met great’s enshrinement. The project was meant to celebrate all of Gil’s accomplishments and bring awareness to the campaign for his election to Baseball’s highest honor. The updated mural will be revealed in ceremony July 30 at 10:30 a.m.

Other places where Hodges is honored includes, Hodges received New York City’s highest civilian honor, the Bronze Medallion, in 1969. On April 4, 1978 (what would have been Hodges’ 54th birthday), the Marine Parkway Bridge, connecting Marine Park, Brooklyn with Rockaway, Queens, was renamed the Marine Parkway–Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge in his memory. Other Brooklyn locations named for him are a park on Carroll Street, a Little League field on Shell Road in Brooklyn. In addition, part of Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, is named Gil Hodges Way.

In Indiana, the high school baseball stadium in his birthplace of Princeton and a bridge spanning the East Fork of the White River in Pike County on State Road 57 bear his name. In addition, a Petersburg Little League baseball team is named in his honor, the Hodges Dodgers.

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