Fred Hill Inducted into ABCA Hall of Fame
Jan 04 | Baseball
Photo Gallery ORLANDO - In front of a large gathering of coaches at every level from across the nation, former Rutgers baseball head coach Fred Hill was officially inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) Hall of Fame Saturday evening at the World Center Marriott in Orlando.
Hill won 1,089 games at the collegiate level during his coaching career, including 11 NCAA Regional appearances, 12 regular season conference championships and eight conference tournament titles during his tenure at Rutgers. Click here to read the full release.
Hill was joined by Denny Craubaugh, Mark Fuller, Ray Korn and Mike Roberts in the ABCA Hall of Fame Class of 2015.
FRED HILL ABCA HALL OF FAME INDUCTION SPEECH
"I have a lot of people here tonight to thank. I would like to start off a bit differently than some. My brother Brian is here - Brian please stand up. He was the head coach of the Orlando Magic for a number of years. Of course some of you might be very familiar with him. He went to a different high school than I did because he didn't want to play for me.
"Congratulations to all the other inductees. It is a great honor to be a member of the Hall of Fame. Congratulations to Denney (Crabaugh), Mark (Fuller), Mike (Roberts) and another Jersey guy in Ray Korn. I went against some of Mike's teams at North Carolina and they were very-well schooled.
"A special thanks to my wife Evelyn and my children - Nancy, Freddie, Linda, Jimmy, Tracey and Karen. I also have a few grandchildren running around. It is a very special thanks to them, because as mentioned by some before, we spend a lot of time at our trade. I certainly spent a lot of time away from my family which I didn't particularly like, but thought I had to do it to get my teams ready.
"My wife has the reputation of being the rock of Rutgers baseball. I think you can figure that out, maybe. When things were going bad, she would start banging on the fences in the park. I don't know if she fooled anyone or not, but some people liked that Mrs. Hill was involved. Other may not have. But none of them knew that Mrs. Hill was giving me signals. One rock was bunt, two taps was steal and three was a hit-and-run. I had a lot of help along the way, believe me. And I want to thank my children and my wife very much.
"The real credit I believe goes to the players and the assistant coaches. Some of my coaches are here (Joe Litterio, Tim Reilly, Casey Gaynor) and they are getting ready for another great season. But I haven't gotten a hit in 50 years. The credit has to go to the players. They bought into our program, worked extremely hard, were good kids and had some success. Our coaching staff changed year-in and year-out because we didn't have a great number of paid positions, but our coaches did an incredible job. Every one of our kids bought into the program, as I said before, and the coaches gave them first-class information. We have sent 72 to professional baseball and have three of our boys in the major leagues right now. Todd Frazier - who I'm sure you probably saw on TV - is the third baseman for Cincinnati, David DeJesus is an outfielder for the Tampa Bay Rays and Eric Young - who spent 15 years in the major leagues - is now a coach for the Colorado Rockies. Great story on Eric. No one liked him at all and only one coach gave him a chance. It is amazing how our game works. One coach gave him a chance and he ended up in the 1996 All-Star Game and played 15 years in the major leagues and now is instructing young players.
"I had a lot of great mentors as I started my coaching career and moved through programs. My high school and college coaches were outstanding, very special. I coached with Eddie Lyons, who some of you might now if you've sent players to the Cape (Cod League). Eddie was an outstanding coach and I worked with him for a number of years. He taught me a lot of baseball. After 19 years of high school coaching, a fellow by the name of Bill DeAgardy gave me a chance to come to Montclair State University. He named me the head football coach and the head baseball coach. We had some success there for seven years and then Fred Gruninger, Bud Heilman and Joe Boylan gave me a chance to come to Rutgers University. I spent 30 years there. We had all the cooperation we needed and put together some great clubs.
"I am really overwhelmed by being named to the Hall of Fame. I never thought I'd be a baseball coach, but a football coach. It just didn't work out that way and things ended up working out very, very well for me.
"I want to thank all of the people that showed up tonight - friends, assistant coaches and would like the whole group to stand up please.
"I had a few moments in my coaching career that were very, very special. One was my son playing second base for me. My son Jimmy helped lead us the Division III College World Series at Montclair. And my son Freddie, who had a big win today when Seton Hall beat undefeated Villanova, jumped on a plane that was taken back to the station so he couldn't get here. He was the head basketball coach at Rutgers and I was the baseball coach. We were the only father-son head coaching group at that time. Believe me, it was a wonderful situation working with my son.
"Once again, thank you very much to the committee for putting me in the Hall of Fame. I will never be able to repay you and I thank you very much."
