Ron Hunt

Career

After finishing school, Ron Hunt signed with the Milwaukee Braves and spent four seasons in their minor league system. The New York Mets bought his contract in October 1962 and put him on their big league roster. Hunt made his major league debut in 1963 as the Mets' starting second baseman, hitting .272 with 10 home runs—the most he would ever hit in a single season—and 42 RBIs, a total he matched the following year. Before that, he had been working as the bullpen catcher.

He went to manager Casey Stengel and asked to be sent down to the minors to play second base if the Mets weren't going to use him there. Instead, Stengel put him at second base. That same season, Hunt finished second to Pete Rose in the National League Rookie of the Year voting. Stengel had offered a cash reward to any player willing to get hit by a pitch if it helped win a game, and Hunt took 13 hit-by-pitches that year.

In 1964, he batted .303 and was selected as an NL All-Star. The game was held at the Mets' brand-new home, Shea Stadium, where Hunt went 1-for-3. He made the All-Star team again in 1966, going 0-for-1 but laying down a sacrifice bunt in the bottom of the 10th inning that moved Tim McCarver to second base, setting up Maury Wills' game-winning single. Hunt was plunked 11 times that season.

An injury limited him to just 57 games in 1965, and he was hit by only 6 pitches—the sole season in his 12-year career where he didn't get hit at least 10 times. In 1966, his final year with New York, he posted a .288 average, scored 63 runs, and was hit by 11 pitches. That November, the Mets traded Hunt and Jim Hickman to the Los Angeles Dodgers for Tommy Davis and Derrell Griffith. After hitting .263 in a season marred by another injury, and getting hit by 10 pitches, the Dodgers sent Hunt and Nate Oliver to the San Francisco Giants for Tom Haller and Frank Kasheta.

In his first season with the Giants, Hunt batted .250 with two home runs and scored 79 runs. He led the league with 25 hit-by-pitches, the first of seven straight years he topped the NL in that category. His second home run that year came off Bob Gibson in the first inning of the Giants' September 17 game against the St. Louis Cardinals, providing the only run in Gaylord Perry's no-hitter.

Hit by pitches

Ron Hunt lived by a simple creed: "Some people give their bodies to science; I give mine to baseball." And give it he did. Over his career, no one got plunked more often. He led the National League in hit-by-pitches for each of his last seven seasons, and topped the majors in every one of those years except his final campaign in 1974, when Baltimore's Bobby Grich was hit 20 times. Hunt's annual totals were 25, 25, 26, 50, 26, 24, and 16.

In a 2000 interview, Hunt recalled that the real onslaught began after he was traded to San Francisco. He wondered aloud why any pitcher would bother hitting him when the next batters were Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Jim Ray Hart. It was with the Giants that Hunt turned getting hit into a science. He knew the rules demanded a batter "attempt" to avoid a pitch, so he practiced in front of a mirror. He would line up his shoulders, elbows, hips, and ankles exactly where the corner of home plate would be, then twist his body toward the catcher. He wasn't actually dodging the ball, but he made it look like he was—enough to argue he had made an "attempt."

In 1971, playing for the Montreal Expos, Hunt set a modern single-season record by getting hit 50 times. That was the most since Hughie Jennings of the 19th-century Baltimore Orioles was hit 51 times in 1896. At the moment Hunt was plunked for the 50th time, Jennings was credited with only 49, so Hunt briefly held the all-time record. Later research gave Jennings two more hit-by-pitches for 1896, restoring the old mark. As of 2024, the closest any post-1900 player has come to Hunt's 50 is Don Baylor, who was hit 35 times in 1986.

A right-handed batter, Hunt would let his left arm hang over the plate and take the pitch, using his willingness to absorb pain to compensate for a lack of power. On June 25, 1971, he was hit three times in a doubleheader. He also had a peculiar habit: after being struck, he would toss the ball back to the pitcher.

Personal life and death

After his playing days, Hunt ran a liquor store and a sporting goods shop in Wentzville, Missouri, and later became a cattle rancher. He established the Ron Hunt Eagles Baseball Association, a nonprofit live-in program for teens aged 14 to 18 from the U.S., Canada, and abroad. Participants lived in on-site dorms and played on a field Hunt built, competing in roughly 40 summer games against Midwest teams. By 2018, he was reported to have Parkinson’s disease, which doctors linked to head injuries from his baseball career. Hunt died from Parkinson’s and cancer in St. Louis on July 15, 2026, at age 85.