A few days ago, I felt a twinge of surprise upon learning that Rich Hill had just thrown 1.1 scoreless innings for the Red Sox to mark his entry into his 20th big league season.
Not because it was a jolt to realize the 44-year-old was still in the Majors; rather, I was surprised he hadn’t already logged some innings here and there for the A’s, Rockies or another team that I wasn’t following.
However you define it, the man affectionately known as “Dick Mountain” has reached the exalted status of baseball lifer. He’s held the crown for oldest active Major Leaguer since Albert Pujols retired after the 2022 season, and had he signed with a franchise besides Boston (or several others) this year, he would have tied Edwin Jackson’s record by suiting up for his 14th big league team.
I think we all understand that this sort of longevity requires some combination of skill, persistence, luck and a preternatural understanding of one’s physical capabilities. Still, it’s quite possible that Hill is the unlikeliest big leaguer to make it to the cusp of middle age.
Cubs fans surely remember the lanky left-hander’s even lankier early days, when he led with that right elbow arched high before unleashing one of those looping curveballs that seemingly nicked the clouds on the way to the plate. There were some rough outings, like the seven-earned-run dud he delivered in his third career start in 2005, but once he harnessed his stuff, the optimists assured us, he’d be a keeper.
Well, Hill did harness his stuff enough in his third season, already at the relatively advanced age of 27, to rack up 32 starts, 195 innings and 183 strikeouts to go with a sub-4.00 ERA. Alas, that command broke loose again early the following year, and a demotion to the Minors marked the end of his tenure with the Cubs and the beginning of a journey through the professional baseball expanse.
Over the next five seasons with the Baltimore, St. Louis, Boston and Cleveland organizations, Hill made 117 appearances in the Majors and another 72 in the Minors. Along the way he underwent shoulder and elbow surgery, transitioned from starter to reliever and dropped from a three-quarter to a sidearm slot. After posting a ghastly 6.28 ERA with the Indians in 2013, he experienced the depths of personal tragedy when his infant son died from a variety of medical conditions that never gave him a real chance for survival.
And perhaps this is where the story of Rich Hill’s big league career should have ended. To that point, he was a 33-year-old with a 4.74 career ERA and a far less than ideal record for control and durability. From a distance, at least, it wouldn’t have been a surprise if he’d retired to spend more time with his family, before maybe reemerging as a coach somewhere.
But it turned out the transformation from journeyman to living legend was just beginning. After spending much of 2014 with Boston’s Triple-A team and then facing four batters as a member of the Angels, Hill capably filled a LOOGY role down the stretch for the Yankees. The following year, he opted out of his Minor League contract with the Nationals to sign with the independent Long Island Ducks, a head-scratching career move that preceded an even more head-scratching transformation into the ace form he’d once hinted at but never fulfilled.
After fanning 10 batters three times in a four-start stretch to close out 2015 with the Red Sox, a revitalized Hill carried a 9-3 record with a 2.25 ERA and a 10.7 K/9 rate into mid-July for the A’s in 2016. He then delivered a sterling 1.83 ERA over the final month-plus of the regular season for the Dodgers, for which he was handsomely rewarded with a three-year deal for $48 million.
If that seemed an overpay for a mid-30s journeyman coming off a career season, Hill at least provided the production and entertainment value to live up to his end of the bargain. He carried a no-hitter into the 10th inning of a start against the Pirates in August 2017, before becoming the first pitcher to lose a no-no on a walk-off home run. The following year, he figured into another high-profile defeat in Game 4 of the World Series, when the Dodgers bullpen collapsed after Hill departed with just one hit allowed over 6.1 innings. Overall, there were far more successes than failures during the lefty’s tenure in Los Angeles, where went 30-16 with a 3.16 ERA and 10.6 K’s per nine over 68 regular season starts and one relief appearance.
Hill continued fighting the forces of age-related decline even as he looked every bit the baseball Methuselah with the permanent bags under his eyes and sub-90s fastball. He produced a nifty 3.03 ERA for the Twins in 2020 after recovering from offseason elbow surgery, and he recorded a career-high 13 strikeouts (against no walks) in a game for the Rays in 2021.
Hill finally seemed to be nearing the end of the line when a late-season trade to the Padres in 2023 apparently infected him with the bad juju that had plagued the team for most of the year. But hey, this is Dick Mountain we’re talking about. After spending most of 2024 in the guise of your run-of-the-mill suburban dad – he wanted to coach his son’s Little League team – Hill was back where he belonged, on a big league mound, before the season was in the books.
What’s next? For all I know, he’ll attempt something both completely benign and simultaneously awesome to start 2025, like partaking in a spoken word tour with Carlos Zambrano and Michael Barrett. But I fully expect Hill to be up to his usual tricks on a Major League field at some point during the season, mixing in that soft hook and deceptively difficult heater to flummox far younger men and leave us wondering just how far the reigning ageless champ can go.
Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.
Tim Ott
Tim's early yearnings for baseball immortality began on the dirt and grass of the P.S. 81 ballfield in the Bronx. Although a Hall of Fame career was not in the cards, his penchant for reading the MLB record book and volumes of history tomes led to an internship with MLB.com in 2002. Tim fulfilled an array of roles over the next nine years at the company, from editorial game producer to fantasy writer and editor and reporter for MLB-related promotions. While a busy freelance writing career has since taken him in other directions, Tim has always kept baseball in his heart, and is happy to be back to observing and reflecting on our great pastime.