Ron Hunt, the Mets’ gritty second baseman during the early 1960s, who was their first player in the starting lineup of an All-Star Game, the first Met to hit a home run at Shea Stadium and a major leaguer for 12 seasons, but who was particularly notable for getting hit by pitches, died on Wednesday at his home in St. Louis. He was 85.
The cause of death was Parkinson’s disease and cancer, his daughter, Tracy Hunt, said.
Hunt set modern major-league single-season and career records for being hit by pitches, having been plunked 50 times while playing for the Montreal Expos in 1971 — a record that still stands — and 243 times overall, a mark later exceeded by several players.
“First, I would blouse the uniform — this big, wool uniform, I would make sure it was nice and loose,” Hunt told the website FiveThirtyEight in 2015, describing how he courted being hit. “Then I’d choke way up on the bat and stand right on top of the plate. That way, I could still reach the outside pitch.”
After being hit, as he set out for first base, Hunt liked to flip the baseball back to the pitcher. He said he never charged the mound.
When he decided to swing, Hunt, a right-handed batter, held his own, compiling a .273 career batting average. He also stood his ground as a second basemen en route to turning a double play in the face of a runner bearing down. When he pivoted, he straddled the bag rather than trying to get out the way as he was firing the ball to first.
“He has a good arm, and he gets the ball away quickly, but he never tries to avoid the runner,” the Mets coach Don Heffner told Sports Illustrated in 1964. “He just stays in there, and he is taking a lot of physical abuse he doesn’t have to take.”
Heffner added, “Bunting with two strikes, diving into first, stealing home at the right times, he plays the kind of game that brings you to your feet.”
Hunt was the runner-up to the Cincinnati Reds’ Pete Rose in balloting for the National League’s 1963 rookie of the year. On April 23, 1964, in a game against the Chicago Cubs, he hit the first Mets homer at Shea Stadium, their newly opened ballpark. (They played their first two seasons at the Polo Grounds.) He hit a home run at Shea in the 1964 All-Star Game, the first of two he played in while with the Mets, and went on to hit .303 that season.
Hunt was also an aggressive base runner playing under manager Casey Stengel from 1963 to 1965. In the ninth inning of a 1964 game against the Milwaukee Braves, he slid into home plate with the potential tying run and tried to knock the ball loose from catcher Ed Bailey.
“There was a free-for-all and Stengel got into it, having his arms pinned from behind by Denis Menke of the Braves,” the sportswriter Leonard Koppett wrote. “Stengel, at 73, undoubtedly set a record for being the oldest man in a baseball uniform to ever to get into a fight on the field.”
Known for his uncommon intensity, Hunt once remarked: “I know nobody likes to lose, but I just can’t stand it. It sort of eats away at me.”
He was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers before the 1967 season, then played with the San Francisco Giants from 1968 to 1970. He spent nearly four seasons with the Expos before closing out his career with the St. Louis Cardinals late in the 1974 season.
Craig Biggio now holds the modern-era record for times being hit by a pitch, with 285, but he played in 2,850 games to Hunt’s 1,483. (Jason Kendall was hit 254 times and Don Baylor, 267, both also exceeding Hunt’s mark of 243.) Hughie Jennings, who played in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, holds the all-time single-season and career hit-by-pitch records; he was hit 51 times in 1896 and 287 times over the course of his career.
Ronald Kenneth Hunt was born on Feb. 23, 1941, in St. Louis. After playing high school baseball and football, he spent four seasons in the Braves’ farm system. The Mets bought his contract in the fall of 1962.
After leaving baseball, he ran a clinic for players and coaches at all levels of the game and tended to his family’s ranch.
In addition to his daughter, Hunt is survived by his wife, Jackie, whom he met in high school, and a son, Ron Jr.
Late in his career, Hunt made one concession to the impact of being plunked so many times: He wore a rubberized undershirt.
“They called him baseball’s pest,” his wife told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2019. “He’d have the baseball seams in his skin.”
Ash Wu contributed reporting.
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