From the Class of '98, Hines was analyzed on these threads:

1898 Ballot Discussion

Center Fielder Positional Thread

If you know of any others, please let me know.

I can't resist pointing out that this guy would be a team with Larry French, Ken Hunt, and Brad Gulden....

How much did baseball change with Babe Ruth?
-In the 1870s and 1880s, Paul Hines was known as playing a shallow CF and running down balls over his head. So shallow was he that he turned an unassisted triple play from the outfield.

-Tris Speaker was known as playing a shallow CF and running down balls over his head in the 1910s; despite no unassisted trips, I would guess that observers likely said things to the effect that he played close enough to the infield that he was nearly a fifth infielder.

-I'll paraphrase a famous story here. In the 1930s, Lefty Gomez famously cornered the rookie Joe DiMaggio after a game. DiMag had let a ball go over his head and had been playing shallow. Gomez asked what the heck he was doing so shallow? "I'm going to make them forget all about Speaker." Gomez replies: "You're gonna make them forget about Lefty Gomez!" Apocraphal or not, buried in the story is the transition of the game from deadball to lively ball and with it the era of Hines playing just behind second to the era of Dimaggio positioned as a more modern CF would be.