“I was a mediocre student,” Seaver recalled on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2011, at a ceremony in Manhattan honoring military veterans. “If it didn’t have a ball involved, I wasn’t much interested.” But the Marines sharpened his focus.

“The principles that I learned in boot camp were the principles that I took to the mound,” he said. “Focus, dedication. I wouldn’t have made it without the Marine Corps.”

Seaver mentioned a picture taken of him on the mound, locked into attention, during the playing of the national anthem. “You look at my feet, they’re in military position, absolutely,” he said. “That’s the discipline that was instilled in me. It’s a very important reason why I’m in Cooperstown.”

It is not clear how much Seaver and Hodges discussed their Marine roots with each other. They had served under vastly different circumstances — Seaver stateside, Hodges facing incoming kamikaze pilots in the Pacific Theater.

Hodges was a college boy from southern Indiana, noticeable because of his muscles. Stengel, on one of his franchise-building conversational rambles, once said that Hodges was so strong “he could squeeze your earbrows off.” Nobody knew what an earbrow was, and nobody wanted to ask.

I had a mentor in the newspaper business who had been a young Columbia University dropout and baseball freak, sent to the island of Okinawa. There were rumors that a large young Marine on the island was a major league ballplayer. (The Dodgers had let Hodges play one game at third base in 1943 before he shipped out.)

On Okinawa, my friend heard rumors that Hodges had been in hand-to-hand combat, but that rumor has been deflated by Mort Zachter, the author of “Gil Hodges: A Hall of Fame Life,” published in 2015. Hodges was awarded a Bronze Star, with the citation mentioning his duties supporting his commanding officer, in a dangerous zone, but there is no mention of his being in direct combat. He surely saw death all around him.