Penn Hills man wins battle with Baseball Hall of Fame for his great-uncle

From The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Have you ever received an award that got your name wrong? Now imagine that award is a bronze plaque in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.

That's a little of what Ron Hill has been dealing with for a year and a half, since discovering that his great-uncle, John Preston Hill aka Pete Hill, was one of the best hitters and all-around players of the early 1900s.

A star on some of the greatest early black teams -- the Cuban X-Giants, Philadelphia Giants, Leland Giants and Chicago American Giants -- he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2006 with 16 other African-Americans who loved the game and excelled at it, most long before Jackie Robinson won the right to play alongside white ballplayers in 1947.

But his plaque says "Joseph Preston Hill."

"We never heard of him," says Ron Hill, 64, his great-nephew from Penn Hills.

So no Hill descendant was in Cooperstown, N.Y., that day in 2006 when the plaque was unveiled. They might never have known they had such a famous relative -- or that his name, birth date and other biographical information were wrong -- if not for some sharp-eyed baseball historians and a cousin's love for genealogy.

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http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10220/1077978-51.stm#ixzz0w0hKSTQM