Page 30 - Delaware Lawyer - Winter 2023

FEATURE
Chuck Durante
OF COUNSEL: Harry Hoch
He outpitched Walter Johnson on a blister- ing June afternoon in
St. Louis. Four months later, he was filing mo- tions on Rodney Square.
Harry Hoch leveraged
his cur veball to finance
his education, achieve
statewide celebrity and
reach the major leagues
before leaving Organized
Baseball while at the top
of his game. He was Del-
aware’s youngest school
principal in 1905 and the
oldest living ex-Phillie
when his former team
won its first World Series
in 1980. In between, he was an influential Delaware law- yer, in the courtroom and the conference room.
Hoch’s career path reflects an earlier era, when aspir- ing teachers had to leave Delaware to learn their craft, when it could be a rational act to abandon major league baseball for another profession, when a downstate law- yer could be City Solicitor of Wilmington, when a law- yer’s load included federal litigation and mechanics’ liens. While pitching to earn his college and law school tuition, he became the only member of the Delaware bar to pitch for the Phillies. The brevity of his baseball career, despite its brilliance, is a testament to that franchise’s misman- agement before the Carpenter family.
The most talented of a flock of accomplished baseball- playing sons of Charles M. Hoch, a merchant who mi- grated from Pennsylvania to Woodside in Kent County in
the 1880s, Harry Hoch excelled from grade school until he retired from Morris James in his late 70s.
At 15, Hoch was se- lected to study away from home in a program designed to expand the state’s thin roster of teachers in the 1900s, one of 12 Kent County youths who were given the chance to pledge a $250 bond to finance their attendance at a Pennsylvania teachers’ school.
The bond would be forgiven if, after completing their three-year course of study, they returned to teach in Delaware for two years. Under the practice of that era, when teacher training was scant — Delaware College in Newark was focused on ag- riculture, engineering and liberal arts, and Delaware State College had just begun — 12 promising students from each county were selected for this program, as the state
expanded its commitment to public schooling.
Hoch was assigned to Keystone State Normal School, the forerunner of Kutztown State, where his pitching for
the school team drew the attention of scouts.
Upon graduation in 1905, he returned to Kent Coun- ty and was named superintendent of the elementary
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28 DELAWARE LAWYER WINTER 2023