In his World Series debut, Tim Hill did not look overwhelmed.
Entering with a runner on first base in the fifth inning Saturday, Hill needed just two pitches to retire Dodgers Game 1 hero Freddie Freeman and needed six more to punch out NLCS hero Tommy Edman.
He returned for the sixth inning, sat down a pair of lefties and handed the baton to Clay Holmes in a Game 2 the Yankees would lose through no fault of their bullpen.
If a journeyman lefty seemed calm in the face of pressure, he has encountered larger obstacles than Freeman’s bat.
Hill was a 32nd-round flier out of tiny Bacone College (an NAIA school in Oklahoma) in 2014, selected by the Royals and impressing immediately: In Rookie Ball and Low-A, he pitched to a 1.64 ERA in his first two-and-a-half months as a pro.
He reported to his first spring training in 2015, when he learned the odds were about to be stacked even further against him.
In his physical, doctors found “my blood work was a little off,” Hill said this week.
They ordered more tests, and Hill’s mind — and apparently the medical professionals’ minds — went to his father, who had died of colon cancer.
“[Doctors] were like, ‘We want to give you a colonoscopy. We don’t think we’re going to find anything,’ ” Hill said. “But they did.”
At 25, Hill learned he had a tumor and Stage 3 colon cancer. What was supposed to be his first complete season as a minor leaguer was gone before it started.
He later would learn he had Lynch syndrome, an inherited disorder that increases the risk of cancer.
A surgery removed half his colon. Radiation and chemotherapy followed. Hill, a Southern California native, lived with a sister in San Diego who doubled as his caretaker.
“She was taking me to doctors,” Hill remembered. “She just wanted to make sure that everything was getting done. Nothing was falling through the cracks.”
After eight months of chemo, Hill beat cancer and lost much of his body in the process.
A 6-foot-4 professional baseball player had dropped 70 pounds and saw his organization in Arizona in December 2015 while weighing 145 pounds.
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“When I showed up back in the spring in 2016,” Hill said with a smile, “I was back to, like, 210.”
With the new year came a new diet, the drugs from chemo that make you “feel so s–tty” having finally worn off. He had energy. He had a career to begin again and weight to find.
He started eating six full meals a day. What food?
“Literally everything,” Hill said.
He would wake up in the morning and lift weights, then eat and then nap. He would awake and start the cycle over again, a pair of naps built into his every day.
“It was crazy,” Hill said. “I couldn’t get enough food. It was like two-and-a-half months of that.”
He does not quite recommend habits that “were probably not the healthiest,” but they were effective. He gained back the weight and reported to Royals spring training in the same low-200s shape he had been before the diagnosis.
A stick figure just months before began rising, touching Double-A in his first season back. He made his major league debut in 2018, was traded to the Padres in 2020, signed with the White Sox ahead of this season and was DFA’d in June, when the Yankees pounced.
Immediately, Hill felt comfortable with a team that believed in him and was “vocal about it,” he said, noting Jose Trevino’s insistent belief especially.
Now 34, a 32nd-round pick from Bacone College and cancer survivor is recording outs for the Yankees in the World Series.
“Amazing,” Hill said. “It’s been great. Super blessed just to be on this team.”
