I’m playing the Seattle Mariners in Out Of The Park Baseball. I have a decent prospect in my minor leagues, a pitcher named Randy Hodges.
When I looked up his real life stats i found that in 1977 he pitched one third of an inning giving up 2 run on 2 hits. In rookie league. That’s it. This is like Moonlight Graham on steroids.
I’m becoming obsessed trying to figure out why he only pitched one third of an inning. Googling him gives me his stats but no information. It doesn’t help that there was a Randy Hodges that played a few years in the minors in the 1990’s. I even went to the Bradenton Herald (Bradenton is where the Gulf Coast Braves played) and searched their archives and came up empty.
I’m mostly posting this to vent my frustration but if anyone has any ideas that might help me figure out this meaningless thing that is driving me crazy, it would be appreciated.
There is a Sporting News player contract card for him. It has his full name as Randy Luther Hodges and says he batted & threw righthanded, was 6’ 1" and weighed 185. He was assigned to the Bradenton Braves 6/28/77, put on temporary inactive list 7/27/77 and reinstated 9/20/77. It further states he was reserved for 1978 but then released 1/18/78.
He is likely the same Randy Hodges, who was a senior righthanded pitcher with Georgia Southern in 1977 and was named to the All-South Independent Team, a team of all stars from independent universities in the southeast region of NCAA District 3.
If the Georgia Southern pitcher is the same person, the Macon News of June 4, 1976, page 15, says he is a graduate of Baldwin High School in Milledgeville, Georgia.
I think this is the part that’s going to be really hard to track down.
A guy in a low-minor league, who was probably not ever a real prospect for the majors, fifty years ago, is someone who probably had very little written about him, beyond maybe an article or two when he was a high school or college pitcher. Even in the town where his minor league team played, the team probably got very little coverage in the local papers, other than scores and maybe short articles, and it’s unlikely that they would have remarked on a little-used player.
Did he blow out his arm? Did he just decide he wasn’t enjoying baseball? Did he need to get a real job, to support a wife or a kid (minor-league players make very little money)?
I did a little poking around for an obituary; if he was a college senior in 1977, he was probably born in 1955 (give or take a year), but I didn’t find anything that seemed to line up right.
I thought to look Hodges up on Ancestry, as I have a paid account.
It can be hard to sort through the possible hits, but what I find is that he was probably born in 1955 (maybe on March 24, which is my own birthday), in Milledgeville, GA (where @Kramer found he went to high school).
What I don’t find is a record or obituary for someone of that name and age, with a connection to Georgia. If he’s still alive, he’s now 70.
It appears there is currently a Randy Luther Hodges living in Baxley, Georgia whose parents lived, died and are buried in Milledgeville, GA. If you want to contact him, you can find phone numbers and addresses with various searches.