April 23, 2024
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Morris grad, now MLB.com editor, keeps in touch with Mazon roots

Growing up in Mazon, Bill Hill was the kind of kid who spent hours on end throwing a baseball against the wall to himself. Over and over again. When they got a game together in the small town of about 700 residents at the time, Hill said there was never a full 18 to play again. More like 10, so they would play by modifying the rules and making the batter call the field he was hitting it to or said that the ball hitting the pitcher's mitt meant you were out.

By Jon Styf

World Series Game 3. On the (From left)

World Series Game 3. On the (From left)

After years as a news reporter, sports reporter and editor in Morris, the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights and then the Arizona Republic, he landed his dream job at MLB.com. That's how, in 2007, Hill ended up back at Wrigley Field for Game 3 of the Cubs' series with the Arizona Diamondbacks. "I said to myself that, if the Cubs ever make World Series, I will do whatever it takes to get tickets for coach (Keith) Houchin," Hill said. Three years later, Houchin died. But last fall, the day before the Cubs were set to host Game 3 of the World Series, Hill gave Keith Houchin Jr., one of Houchin's sons, a call. "What are you doing tomorrow?" Hill remembered asking. "I have two tickets for you." The phone went dead. Houchin didn't believe what he was hearing. But the next day, in the first World Series game at Wrigley Field since 1945, Kirk and Keith Houchin Jr. were in attendance. "It's not the same as paying back his dad, but it felt good," Hill said. "He appreciated it so much. He was like a little kid, he and his brother."

Stories like that are what make Hill appreciative of how he has been able to reconnect to his childhood friends from Mazon via Facebook. "Small town like Mazon, most people don't get to experience that," Hill said. "But you know everyone and they know you and people take care of each other. Coach (Houchin) took care of me." Which is why, to this day, Hill follows the same Morris newspaper where he once worked, filling the two pages of sports with content five days a week and also delivering the afternoon paper to readers in Mazon during his childhood. And he keeps up with Morris, where one of his most interesting baseball memories actually happened on a tennis court. Sometime after former Major Leaguer Eddie Spiezio moved from Joliet to Morris and opened his store, Hill was playing tennis at McKinley Park and, on the next court was Spiezio, wearing bermuda shorts and hitting the ball back and forth with his wife. In the corner, there was a stroller with a little kid sitting in it. That kid, Hill assumes, was none other than future Major Leaguer Scott Spiezio, who now has his own kids playing sports at Morris High School.