The legend of the man they call ‘Dick Mountain’ continues – as the oldest player in baseball hopes to crack a major league roster once again.
45-year-old southpaw pitcher Rich Hill has inked a minor league contract with the Kansas City Royals, as revealed by the ballclub on Tuesday.
Hill will report to the Triple-A Omaha Storm Chasers as he’ll try to play for a 14th MLB franchise at some point this season.
If Hill does that, he’ll move into a tie for the most MLB teams that one person has ever played for.
Hill is currently tied with the late Octavio Dotel. If he suits up for the Royals, he’ll join fellow pitcher Edwin Jackson atop this peculiar mountain.
The pro baseball journey for the Milton, Massachusetts native begins in 1999 when he was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds in the 36th round.
45-year-old Massachusetts native Rich Hill signed a deal with the Kansas City Royals
Hill, who will start in the Royals’ farm system, hopes to play for a record-tying 14th MLB team
He passed on joining the Big Red Machine in favor of playing college baseball at the University of Michigan.
Hill was drafted again in 2001 – this time, in the seventh round by the Anaheim Angels – but again chose to play in college.
He was finally signed by the Chicago Cubs, who picked him in the fourth round in 2002. The Cubs were team 1-of-13 for Hill as he made his MLB debut against the Florida Marlins in 2005.
Hill played for the Cubs for four seasons, an anomaly in his career, before signing with the Baltimore Orioles for one season.
Following that, he spent three seasons pitching for his hometown Boston Red Sox.
From there, Hill embarked on a series of one-season stints: the Cleveland Indians in 2013, the Angels and New York Yankees in 2014, the Red Sox again in 2015 [after a brief stint in the farm system for the Washington Nationals], and the Oakland A’s in 2016.
Just before the 2016 trade deadline, the A’s traded Hill to the Los Angeles Dodgers in exchange for a package of prospects. Prior to that trade, Hill was having one of the best seasons of his career – earning AL Pitcher of the Month in May of that year.
Hill would stay with the Dodgers for parts of four seasons – reaching the playoffs in all four. He started twice for the Dodgers in the the 2017 World Series, where they lost to the Houston Astros and once in the 2018 World Series, where they lost to the Red Sox.
Hill started a combined three games for the Dodgers in the 2017 and 2018 World Series
Hill was given the nickname ‘Dick Mountain’ and once wore it on his Players Weekend jersey
After being non-tendered at the end of the 2019 season, Hill once again bounced around the league: 2020 with the Minnesota Twins, 2021 with the Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Mets, the Red Sox a third time in 2022, the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Diego Padres in 2023, and most recently, a fourth stint with the Red Sox in 2024.
Hill’s journeyman career led him to interacting with a number of players, with one in particular giving him his nickname.
Brock Holt, a member of the 2015 Red Sox, believed it would be funny to give the pitcher the nickname ‘Dick Mountain’ – ‘Dick’ being short for ‘Richard’ and ‘Mountain’ being adjacent to ‘Hill’.
Hill clearly didn’t hate the name, putting it on the back of his jersey during Player’s Weekend in 2018.
At 20 seasons in MLB, Hill is the longest tenured active player in baseball.
