The Many Journeys of Billy Hulen

Not far from Igerna, California, the home of the once-missing B.R. Logan, is the city of Yreka. Yreka, now the seat of Siskiyou County, is a place that holds onto its history as part of the Wild West — you can take a walking tour of historic buildings through the city, and municipal websites still tell the tale Mark Twain himself wrote about the town’s naming. With a population of 7,765, it’s a quiet place, held by the low noise of the nearby Shasta River.

Back at the turn of the century, though, Yreka was a gold rush boomtown. The city was founded as a mining settlement in 1851, and it didn’t take long for the bustle to begin. Its streets were full of people; there was a steady stream of immigration, with Chinese communities establishing themselves not long after the town was incorporated. The Yreka Flats, as they came to be known, ended up being a prodigious source of gold, sustaining the town for decades after it was first discovered there.

And that’s where our story begins — just a few years after the greatest game of baseball ever played in Southern Oregon. Our hero, as it turns out, was a resident of Ashland, Oregon, the antagonists in that contest; one imagines him reading the Ashland paper, shaking his head at the violence and treachery of that undefeated Grants Pass team. His name was Billy Hulen, and by the time we meet him in 1906, his titles were already plentiful: “The Kid,” Phillie and Senator, the best left-handed shortstop you’d ever seen, survivor of spring-training malaria, Northwestern League champion, member of the Order of Elks and the Knights of Pythia, and — most importantly — one of the most beloved baseball players up and down the Pacific coast.

He was in Yreka that February tending to his gold claim. One day, he headed north to Seattle on some non-specific business. A month later, no one had heard from him. None of his many friends had seen him — not since he had passed through Ashland without even telling his wife he was going to be in town. And so, on March 20, the call was put out for friends of Billy Hulen — in Vancouver and Everett, Ashland and San Francisco, all the way to St. Louis, where he was under contract for the next season — to begin searching for him. Billy Hulen simply had to be found.

***

Billy Hulen was born on March 12, 1870, in Dixon, California. The first mention of his skill that I can find in a newspaper came in 1890, when Hulen was 20; the following year, the Los Angeles Times was already describing him as a “wonder” with an “inimitable” playing style. It didn’t take long for Hulen, a slight, left-handed shortstop, to become a local favorite. That winter, reports began to surface of him receiving offers from eastern teams; he expressed a preference to stay in California. The consensus was that Hulen, beloved though he was, would be not long for the diamonds of the Golden Coast. In March of 1892, the Times wrote: “Billy Hulen the Kid is quite a favorite with the Los Angeles public. Billy will be a National Leaguer soon.”

Hulen spent the next two summers in Illinois and Minnesota, wintering in his home state and delighting the crowds there — “Billy Hulen Was Invulnerable to Both Cold and Barnes Twirlers,” reads a San Francisco headline from 1895, recalling a game during which Hulen’s “powerful arm sent ball after ball sailing out over the head of McHale in right, to lose itself…” In March of the following year, he took a little timeout from baseball to get married, even though the parents of the bride disapproved. But nothing could stop the Kid. He was on his way to spring training with the Phillies, having signed a contract with them over the winter. The Times’ prediction had come true.

At first, the glowing reports streamed in. Philadelphia player-manager Billy Nash was “delighted” with Hulen’s performance; he was the best left-handed infielder they’d ever seen. Here’s the report that came from the Philadelphia Press in late March of 1896, quoted for the benefit of Hulen’s Minnesotan fans in the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

But spring passed, and such reports of Hulen stopped coming. What became of the player who could defend against balls banged down on him in every conceivable way, and at every degree of speed?

Baseball-Reference tells us that Hulen hit for a 93 OPS+ in his season with the Phils — not extraordinarily bad, though a far cry below the 190 posted by teammate Ed Delahanty. It was probably in the fielding area that Hulen truly fell short. For all the articles written in glowing praise of his fielding, defending him from haters who might question his ability to play short as a lefty, Hulen committed 56 errors in just 738 innings in the field — the 11th-most in the league that season, despite having played hundreds fewer innings than his companions on the leaderboard. (The league average was 35 errors in 1038 innings.) Whatever the cause, Hulen’s contract was sold to the Columbus team that offseason. His stint as a National Leaguer was short, and, for the first time, he had failed to become a fan favorite in the city where he played.

But over two seasons in Columbus, Hulen once again distinguished himself, earning the favor of another city and another stint in the National League — this time with the Washington Senators. He survived a bout of “malarial fever” in the spring of 1899 and came out of it, presumably, fresh and ready to go. He batted a mere .147/.256/.162 and committed 10 errors over 19 games. Before May had come to an end, Billy Hulen had seen the last of the National League.

So he headed out west, where he was still remembered fondly. He made a stop in Kansas City, becoming the captain of their Blues, before returning to his old stomping grounds in California, where, in the early days of the new century, he accepted an offer to become the manager of the Santa Clara College baseball team. He did that for less than a week before accepting another offer, this time to become the owner/manager of a new Western League team in Pueblo. Despite the fact that he’d barely been there and was leaving the Santa Clara College squad coachless for the rest of the season, he was played out by the college band with much applause and fanfare. (The Santa Clara team, to their credit, were champions of their league that season.)

After a successful season, the Pueblo team moved to Colorado Springs for 1901 — a matter of some controversy, as a team had previously been promised to Sioux City by Hulen himself. Once there, Hulen promptly started drama with the heads of the Western League, first by attempting to sell half of the interest into the team to catcher Timothy “Bridget” Donahue, then by suing the Western League for refusing to allow the sale to go ahead — the League saw the team as a public service to the citizens of Colorado Springs, not to be bought and sold to random outsiders; Hulen saw it as his own personal property. Hulen then failed to secure the $7,000 in advance ticket sales for the season that was necessary for the league to keep the team in Colorado Springs. The people of Colorado Springs became concerned; Hulen reassured them, scrounged up $6,250 from somewhere, and convinced the League to give him an extension on the remaining $750. Eventually, he convinced the League to allow the sale to Donahue as well.

The team — which, it is worth noting, was called the Millionaires — was mildly successful. At the end of the season, Hulen bought out Donahue, and promised the citizens of Colorado Springs an end to all the ownership shenanigans. Two months later, he sold the team to one Thomas F. Burns. He went back to California.

***

Over the intervening years, Hulen bounced around the western United States with prodigious energy. In 1902 alone, he played for Salt Lake City, Sacramento, Ashland, and Seattle; the papers in California faithfully reported every move, and with each move, his fanbase became wider-spread. Though not all remembered him fondly:

In the winter of that year, Hulen settled in Ashland, reports flowed of his popularity in both a personal and a baseball sense; for his part, Hulen claimed that he wanted out of the baseball business — that he was “anxious to retire.” Still, after a few quiet months — a rare occurrence for him — he signed again with Seattle for the 1903 season. After a quiet 1904, he joined the Everett team as a player-manager in 1905, and — unlikely as it was for someone with such a varied career — did something he’d never done before. He led the team to the league pennant.

A few months later, he went missing.

***

What could have prompted Billy Hulen to flee the world he’d come to know so well over the past 15 years right at the peak of his success? That he could have run away was inconceivable to the people searching for him, who were certain that he’d run into some mishap. He had just signed on to manage a team in a new Oregon league. The months went by; the desperate newspaper notices continued, all the way down the coast. Hulen’s parents in Dixon were distraught, as they’d never gone so long without hearing from their son; his wife in Ashland, too, was in despair. Rumors began to circulate that he’d been robbed for his diamonds and left murdered by the side of some northwestern road. Some claimed they’d encountered Hulen in various places — an Oregon pub, or perhaps somewhere in Seattle. The Lodge of Elks, an order of which he was a member, traced his luggage to Denver. A lot of pieces adding up to nothing.

As more time went by, the frantic notices slowed, then faded completely. Hulen was gone.

A year after his disappearance, a report surfaced that he might be in Canada, managing the Vancouver team. And shortly after that came a legal notice: Mrs. Blanche Hulen had begun a suit against her husband — the husband who was still, to the world’s knowledge, missing without a trace — for desertion. He was alive, and she, at least, knew where.

The “where” turned out to be a place that absolutely no one would look.

Why Medicine Hat? In all my searching, I haven’t been able to figure out why Hulen chose to go there, for whatever reason he did go there. Business trouble, maybe — he had a precedent for it. Or maybe marital trouble. Maybe he was sick of his family, or sick of his reputation; maybe he wanted to go where nobody knew his name, where his lengthy baseball history wouldn’t follow him. What better place to lose yourself than a different country, in a just-incorporated city?

Still, even living in a different country under a different name — even after fleeing his life in the most extreme way possible — Hulen couldn’t disguise himself. There are some things — a turn of the heel, a flip of the arm — that you can’t change so easily. Baseball gave him away.

***

Hulen returned to Washington, to Spokane, in 1908. But the following year, he came back to Medicine Hat. He missed much of the first part of the season due to an ear surgery. And a few weeks into the season, his career was ended by an errant pitch to the eye.

But Hulen stayed in baseball. He remained a fan favorite. He managed the nascent team in Regina, Saskatchewan; he returned home to Ashland and Dixon; he went to work for the Angels, back up to Salt Lake and Sacramento. He got into more fights with umpires and league officials. Tales were told of his temper, of his sparkling play — the left-handed shortstop — of the manager with one eye who had once been in the big leagues. Who had once disappeared without a trace — and then came back, his legend the same as it ever was.