T-Ball Coach Newest New Hyde Park Little League Hall of Famer

The New Hyde Park Little League inducted its newest hall of famer on Saturday afternoon before the start of the boys minors portion of the seventh annual all star game at Nuzzi Field. 

NHPLL Clinic Director Robert Hodgson has spent 12 years running the T-ball program for the four, five and 6-year olds in the little league as well as training coaches for the various teams.

“I was free I guess at the time,” Hodgson said. “They had asked me to run it one year, four presidents ago and really just somebody to do it and the way they were doing it, coaches do whatever they wanted for two weeks and they played eight weeks of games, and we always stunk in tournaments; everyone wanted to play New Hyde Park because we were awful.”

Hodgson, who works for the IRS in Manhattan, would run youth hockey and basketball tournaments in the city at the Children’s Aid Society as well as coach basketball and baseball teams. When he got on the New Hyde Park Little League board, he took over the T-ball program and asked for four years to give the program results. The program encompasses players from 5-years old to tournament age. He also teaches religion at Holy Spirit, to third, sixth and seventh graders.

That morning he had also been at the New Hyde Park Road School giving trophies out for the last day of T-ball. Hodgson estimates that he has had an impact on or influenced over 1,000 youth players in the program.

“It’s not me, it’s the coaches,” he corrects. “I changed the philosophy, my philosophy is I’m going to teach the coaches so if I teach one kid I get one good kid, if I teach eight coaches, then I get 40 good kids.”

Last year the girls majors team went to Portland, Oregon for the Little League Softball World Series and defeated two foreign countries.

“These (coaches) I tell them, ‘you’re the only link (the players) have to baseball’ and if you’re good to them and patient and they have fun, they’ll keep coming back. That’s why these kids keep coming back, they have good coaches.”

Hodgson says that he also stresses “patience,” especially with the youngest players “because some coaches come in here and they let their ego or the testosterone get in the way and they get too frustrated too easy and you can’t work with a little kid and get frustrated. Because with a lot of these kids, the only time they play baseball is Saturday; parents don’t take them in the backyard like they used to years ago.”

During his time as president of the little league, Hodgson also changed the all star game roster, limiting the number of players to 12 after it was thought that too many players were making the cut. The decision also affected his son, who one year wound up No. 13 on the voting results.

“Everybody was saying ‘you’re the president, you’ve got to put your son on it,’ I said ‘no, I’m the president that’s why my son can’t be on it’ and if we make a rule we make a rule and I look for people who are going to be consistent like that and she’s like that,” he said.

Hodgson’s son, now 21 years old, played through the age of 15, while his daughter, now 23, continued up until the age of 13.

It was also T-ball at which he was first introduced to current little league president Nancy Gregory as a coach and encouraged her to join the little league board.

“I told her the other board members are getting on, we need to get new board members,” he said. “I always try to push the better coaches into maybe joining the board one day and she joined, right up to president.”

So it was natural that Gregory had called Hodgen to inform him of the hall of fame induction.

“Last night when she called me to tell me I said ‘you’ve got to tell me one thing: was liquor involved in the voting?’ She says ‘no,’ I said ‘you know what, then I’ll accept, if they were sober, I’m in’.”

Get New Hyde Park news on Facebook