RICH HILL
How come nobody cares about Rich Hill?
I’ve often wondered.
I knew of Rich Hill when he was a high school baseball player, pitching locally for Milton (MA) HS.
Today Rich Hill is 41 and “the survival thing is real.”
Hill’s personality is a curious amalgam of intensity, fierce competitiveness and colorful invectives, mixed with his playful, gregarious and benevolent nature.
How else could he make it, lasting in the big leagues since 2005 and wearing ten different uniforms?
Including two stints with his hometown Red Sox (2010-’12; and 2015).
Struggling.
And thriving.
The fits he throws, on the field and between innings in the dugout, have become epic.
Hill is ultra-competitive and intensely focused; “you’re not going out there [to the mound] to make friends or be cordial,” he has opined.
Video clips from these eruptions, the marvel from his teammates, and the monikers bestowed upon him — names such as Psycho Rich and Dick Mountain — serve to define him.
In part.
Because he’s way deeper than that.
As his present manager, Kevin Cash of the Tampa Bay Rays concedes, “He’s really awesome [the] four days around him [between starts].
That fifth day, you probably want to stay away from him.
When he gets on the mound, he turns into a different guy.”
This is no show, nor is it some manufactured persona.
And this is not really ‘a different guy,’ but rather, the guy Rich Hill has become.
His perspective is shaped by the failures and frustrations he’s endured throughout a 20-year professional career, marked by a lot of teetering.
At times like a house of cards, I’m talkin’.
And by the staggering, unthinkable and incomprehensible heartbreak of losing a child two months after birth…to a rare brain disorder and kidney failure.
“That just reaffirmed the concept of time and how valuable it is,” Hill reasoned.
“Part of that with the loss of our son is just understanding that every time you get the opportunity to go out there and pitch, it could be your last time.
So you want to make the most of it.
Every single opportunity.”
Sounds like Rich Hill.
Hill bore his family’s soul and his own — to the bone — when he shared the most personal feelings and intimate details related to losing their newborn, Brooks, in an April 2019 essay published in the Players Tribune.
They brought him home from the hospital with hospice care, held him gently and softly sang Take Me Out to the Ballgame before he died.
Do wins and losses really matter in this context?
A week after Brooks died, Hill went to spring training with the Red Sox.
Being back to baseball would be best, he thought.
“That was something that changed the whole definition of day-to-day, really, life,” Hill said.
“That was something that…fed into kind of molding what I do now.”
Brooks remains part of the Hills’ lives.
Their Field of Genes campaign has been launched with the goal of raising $1 million, to support research into rare diseases, and to establish a scholarship in Brooks’ name.
$891,073 has been raised so far.
Hill’s career has resembled a checkerboard, as opposed to a straight line between two points.
Injuries have been a constant, and unwelcome companion.
Blisters frequently sidelined him; Tommy John surgery in 2011; a procedure using a brace to repair another ligament tear in October 2019.
Comes with the territory, but frustrating.
Then there was the reinvention thing.
Hill has rejiggered his delivery to suit his varied roles.
He has been both a starter and a side-arming reliever (2013 in Cleveland, with Cash as his bullpen coach).
Traded three times, languishing in Triple-A for a while, and released.
He stayed active, throwing for an American Legion team in Massachusetts, which rekindled his desire to return to starting pitching.
And he did just that, joining the independent Long Island Ducks at age 35.
Two solid outings got him re-signed by the Red Sox.
Since then, Hill — the ageless wonder — has logged an impressive 43–22 record over 95 games, 94 of which were starts.
That, along with 584 strikeouts in 505 innings pitched, landed him the mother lode: a three-year $48 million contract from the Dodgers in 2017, after which he spent a year with the Twins and then joined Tampa on a one-year $2.5 million deal.
None too shabby for a guy who was drafted out of high school in 1999; overlapped in college at Michigan with Tom Brady; began his pro career in 2002; first reached the big leagues in 2005; and ended 2020 as the majors’ oldest active pitcher and second-oldest player (Albert Pujols).
“The survival thing is real, and you want to continue to keep fighting.
Letting go of what other people will think, or what other people will say, is some of the most valuable things that you can put in your life…
If you intensely love something, continue to keep working.
And that’s what I do here with baseball.
I love it.
No matter how good it goes to how bad it is, I love playing.”
He has earned both American League (May 2016; May 2021) and National League (July 2017) Pitcher of the Month honors.
He is the only pitcher in Major League history to have had a perfect game broken up by a 9th-inning fielding error and a no-hitter broken up in extra innings by a walk-off home run.
And he has never won a World Series championship.
Maybe Hill wants to pull “a Brady,” and play till he’s 45.
By his own admission, “I’m throwing the ball really well…so why would I entertain anything else?”
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in July 2021.]
