Looking Back: Hugh Hill's .416 Batting Average

  The Nashville Vols won their second consecutive Southern Association pennant in 1902. Nashville manager Newt Fisher guided the Vols in both years since the league began competition in 1901.
   Leading the Vols in batting and pitching was the amazing effort by Hugh Hill. Hill was 22-7 on the mound, tying teammate Warren Sanders (22-12) in victories. As an outfielder, Hill batted a remarkable record .416, a mark never topped in the Southern Association.
   In the booklet Vols Feats, 1901-1950 (published in 1950) by sports editor Fred Russell and sports writer George Leonard of the Nashville Banner, they wrote about Hill:
   Hugh Hill, the boy wonder from the foothills of Chattanooga's historic Missionary Ridge, compiled the highest batting average ever by a Nashville player in 1902 when he hit .416 for 91 games.
   Hill was one of those natural baseball athletes, a standout wherever he played. He pitched most of his first season with the Vols in 1901 but saw a lot of outfield duty in 1902, as well.
   In the latter campaign he won 21 games and lost 11, besides hitting .416. Since when has a baseball player won over 20 games and batted over .400 in the same season? It is doubtful if that feat has ever been duplicated in all organized baseball history.
   The Vols won the pennant in 1901 and 1902. By 1908, when Nashville won its third title, Hill was performing for Kansas City.
   On August 30, 1902, Hill became the first player in the association to make two hits in one inning. He played centerfield and led off. Often, when he was pitching, Hill batted first, too. Just two days before, Hill had taken the mound to beat New Orleans, 4-1, and in one inning he fanned three Pels on nine straight pitches!
   Leonard was the Banner's beat writer for the Vols for many years. The reference to Hill's 11 losses as a pitcher conflicts with other Southern Association records (seven losses). 
   Hill returned to Nashville's Sulphur Dell in September 1948 to attend "Larry Gilbert Day" the 25^th anniversary of Nashville Vols' manager Larry Gilbert's tenure in the Southern Association as a manager. Sulphur Dell looked different to Hill that day as in 1927 the ballpark was torn down, rebuilt and turned around.
   Home plate in 1902 would have been in centerfield in 1948. The Nashville Banner interviewed Hill in 1948 with the story caption: "Nashville's '02 Ace Recalls Year He Set Batting Mark" and "Hugh Hill Says Ball Wasn't Dead When He Hit .416 in Southern: Used To Pitch Every 3rd Day." Hill was 69 years old at the time of this interview. The Banner wrote:
   "Tall, erect, graying Hugh Hill revisited a scene yesterday afternoon that brought a dewy film to his light brown eyes.
    "'Why, they've changed it all around.' The one-time pitcher-outfielder who hit .416 in 1902 (an all-time Southern Association batting mark) remarked.
   "'Look out yonder,'" he said, pointing distantly to centerfield at Sulphur Dell. 'You can still see the old base lines where we played. And there's where the pitching mound was. And see that fence over there behind those bleachers? I used to hit home runs over that fence.
   "'Once I remember, I hit two home runs in one game and the fans showered the field with money. The cops had to stop the game and shovel up the coins. Must have been $65. The fans here were always wonderful. I've never forgotten how grand they were.'
   "Hill, who now runs a grocery store in Cincinnati with his wife, arrived on the Pan American and was greeted at the station by George Stewart (moon Drug Company), a longtime friend with whom he is staying. Hill will attend the Larry Gilbert Jubilee Celebration tonight at the Dell. The sight of the Dell sent Hill reminiscing.
   "'We had a tough time winning that pennant in 1901, but it was different in 1902. We won two-thirds of our games that season. We let the other birds make the mistakes. One of the stars of that day was Doc Wiseman (he used to play that right-centerfield dump-or where it used to be), is also living in Cincinnati.'
   "'I'll tell you why I hit so well in 1902. I was fast and I hit a pretty long ball. So I beat out hits. The infielders had to play me close and the outfielders backed up. I had plenty of territory to poke those hits. They tell me we played with a dead ball. Well, I didn't think so. That ball would travel when you hit it right.'
   "'I used to pitch every three days and when I wasn't on the mound, I played the outfield. We only had three pitchers and for a pitcher to get relief was almost unheard of. I threw to Newt Fisher, our catcher and Manager, for two years and in all that time, only once did he come out to the slab for a conversation.'
   "'I played my last year of baseball in 1918 under an assumed name with Americus, Georgia. Led the league in hitting, too. But I never topped that .416 mark.'"
   Hill's record .416 batting average has been challenged in the modern era.
   There is no question that Hugh Hill was an outstanding baseball player. In his record-setting year he collected 149 hits in 358 at bats to obtain .416. The Southern Association folded at the end of the 1961 season-therefore the record is etched in stone.
   The early years of baseball has been documented sometimes as being incomplete or mistakes in its record keeping. The book, The Southern Association in Baseball, 1885-1961 states:
   "Categories of statistics were minimal at best, as most leagues kept track of only the basic elements such as hits and batting averages. In addition, no special effort was made to keep track of players in less than ten games. Finally, some of the stats were found to be just plain wrong, including some items as elemental as team wins and individual batting averages."
   This brings Hill's 1902 batting average into question. One of the founding members of the Society for American Baseball Researchers (SABR), Ray Nemec searched the league records game-by-game and discovered that Hill's .416 average was not correct. Nemec learned that Hill lost 37 hits and gained 21 at bats to hit .296. He believes that Shreveport's Frank Huelsman (.360) won the batting title for the second straight year.
   Ray Nemec is very thorough and one of the country's most experienced baseball researchers. The official record cannot be changed since the league has not existed for decades. Still, Hill remains in the history books.
   In the research for this story Nemec said, "When checking for players' records, it became apparent that the averages published for the 1902 Southern Association included players listed for the wrong teams. Averages were inconsistent with their game-by-game activities; some records were for fewer games than the player appeared in, etc. A real mess.
   "I used box scores from Sporting Life and various newspapers to compile averages for the players. Listing their span with the teams, adding extra base hits for batters, games started and complete games for pitchers, etc. Since the league folded over 40 years ago, there is no one who would have an interest other than people doing books, etc. The records were put on file with the Minor League Baseball Museum."
   If you check the Southern Association's records for the next highest batting average behind Hill, another Nashville Vol is found. Les Fleming batted .414 in 1941 and needed only one more hit to have reached .417. To solidify the Nashville Vols in the batting champion category, the third highest batting average belongs to another hometown hero, Vols' outfielder Phil Weintraub who batted .401 in 1934.
   Hill played briefly in the major leagues with Cleveland in 1903 where he appeared in one game with one hitless pinch-hit at bat. In 1904, Hill appeared in 23 games with the St. Louis Cardinals. He batted .226 (21-for-93) with three home runs and four RBIs. There is no record of Hill pitching in the major leagues.
   Hill died in Cincinnati, Ohio on September 6, 1958 at age 79 and is buried in Charleston, West Virginia.
Traughber's Tidbit: In 1945, Mobile catcher Harry Chozen was kneeling in the on-deck circle when he was hit in the head by a flying bat that slipped out of the hands of a teammate batting at the plate. Chozen was knocked unconscious. He had entered the game with a 33-game hit streak hoping to eventually break the Southern Association record of 46 games. After this incident, Chozen hit in an additional 16 games before the streak ended.
   SA President Billy Evans ruled that Chozen's failure to get a hit in the game, which he was knocked unconscious, did not break the hitting streak. In that game, Chozen walked in his only time at-bat. During the streak, Chozen delivered twice while pinch-hitting and two other occasions entered the game in late innings batting only once and recording a hit both times. He broke the record in the 47^th game by hitting a home run in his first plate appearance. Chozen's 49-game hit streak lasted 20 years.
Tidbit Two: An excerpt from the book, "Nashville Baseball History: From Sulphur Dell to the Sounds," due in June. In 1908 Nashville won the Southern Association pennant on the last game of the season against New Orleans. Vols' pitcher Vedder Sitton struck out the final two batters in the 1-0 Nashville victory. The Tennessean wrote:
   "As the third strike was called to end the game, thousands of fans swarmed towards the exhausted Sitton while he was embracing his teammates. Six policemen raced to the aid of Sitton. But were themselves swept away by the army of fans. Sitton struggled to leave the field. In desperation he reached for a copper's billy to the keep the crowd away. The exuberant fans eventually overwhelmed him, as they lifted him into the air. Women tried to kiss him and hundreds tried to shake his hand at the same time. The wiring and planks would not detain the hordes in the grandstands when they broke through the lumber and anything in their way.
   "It was an inspiring spectacle when Sitton struck out the last two men in the ninth and ended the game. The thousands in the grandstand and in the bleachers stood and yelled themselves hoarse, while the other thousands surrounding the field surged upon the diamond and carried the victorious Volunteers aloft on their shoulders. The whole diamond and field were literally packed with shouting, frenzied, hilariously maddened throng. It was a good climax to one of the greatest diamond battles ever fought in the south. Every man, woman and child cheered and cheered hard for their home team, and there was not a minute that old Sulphur Dell was not ringing with the voices of thousands, and the bells, horns and artificial contrivances of the craziest ball bugs on the continent."
If you have any comments or suggestions contact Bill Traughber via email [email protected].