Our run through Kansas City Chiefs history brings both stories of triumph and tragedy, and while it's obviously more enjoyable to celebrate the franchise's finest moments or most memorable players, the valleys are as much a part of the lore of a team as its peaks.
At No. 36, we arrive at one of the most tragic chapters in team history, centered on a player who established himself as a great player and person whose unexpected death is still felt to this day. The Chiefs have done well to remember Mack Lee Hill over the years, but the story behind the name is likely lost on younger fans. Let's remedy that.
The complete history of Chiefs players to wear No. 36
The Truck: Mack Lee Hill
Mack Lee Hill went undrafted out of Southern University and reportedly signed with the Chiefs for $300, landed by scout Lloyd Wells on the condition that the money disappeared if he failed to make the team. That turned out to be a rather easy hurdle for Hill. As a rookie in 1964, Hill finished second on the team in rushing with 567 yards and 4 touchdowns on 105 carries, enough to get him into the AFL All-Star Game that offseason and earned him a nickname of "The Truck.”
Hill’s second season was shaping up better than his first, with 627 rushing yards through 12 games, but he tore a ligament in his right knee in the third quarter at Buffalo's War Memorial Stadium on December 12, 1965. The great Bobby Bell later said the hit sounded like a two-by-four cracking, and even then, Hill got up and hobbled off the field under his own power. On the flight home, Hill’s knee swelled up, and team physician Dr. Joseph Lichtor told him he'd probably need surgery. Bell remembered Hill not wanting to see a doctor at all.
Two days later, Hill went in for what should have been a routine operation at Menorah Medical Center and never came out of it. Still on the table, his body temperature spiked to 108 degrees and set off severe convulsions. The 25-year-old back tragically died about an 90 minutes after the surgery began.
The cause of Hill’s death is where the record splits, and it's worth being straightforward here about the difference. The immediate ruling was "a sudden and massive embolism," and that's the popular version that’s remained attached to Hill’s story for years. But the K.C. Star's Conwell Carlson obtained an autopsy report from Dr. Dale O. Smith that February, which pointed instead to acute heat stroke. Carlson wrote that Hill's own strength and muscle made him unusually vulnerable to a sudden spike in body temperature under anesthesia. In a hospital today, it's a survivable event. The injury was minor, and the surgery was ordinary, but the thing that actually killed him was something medicine couldn’t yet catch.
The AFL added Hill to its All-Star team a second time on January 15, 1966, a month after he died. The next year, at a ceremony before a game against Denver, Chiefs QB Len Dawson delivered a tribute that became attached to the Mack Lee Hill Award, given every season since to the Chiefs rookie who best carries his example. That award is still the franchise's ROY honor, which means Hill's name gets read out in that locker room every season.
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