In all of 40+ years in maintenance I have put a parked aircraft in air mode perhaps as many times, the electronic wizards nearly daily for auto pilot checks with hydraulics on, older airframes, but if I had anything to do with it I preferred with a tug and tow bar attached and all gears pinned and chocked, but none of these required the gear selected up!
Used the lock solenoid over-ride button on the gear selector panel, perhaps 20 times mostly for unlock indication faults, again hydraulics not needed.
Aircraft are routinely pushed back and towed with only the steering lock-out pin fitted; though I recall on B727's incidents when this was not enough to stop a tow bar shear pin event, if the FE selected hydraulics or started engine motoring; so it begs the question if this was a maintenance caused incident:- what was going on?