A Beam Of 1992 Sunshine

I want to point you guys to a great interview conducted Wednesday night … and not just because this is the show that I take part in every week (but I’d be happy to plug it, so tune in every Wednesday at 8:30 to Sports Talk NY Live with Mark, A.J., and me … dammit.) The boys had former Met, former Rockies broadcaster, and former tallest Met in captivity Eric Hillman on for what turned out to be an excellent interview recapping his career and his recent participation in this year’s Mets fantasy camp.

The stuff that had me cheering was when he exposed Bobby Bonilla as the cancer we always suspected he was, as Hillman discussed coming up to the majors with the 1992 Mets, “The Worst Team Money Could Buy”. Now when you read this, try to suppress your sudden desire for a 20th anniversary reunion:

“These guys didn’t care about anything. The worst of the worst was Bonilla. He did not care about the game, he didn’t care about anything except his cars, his jewelry, and his real estate, and that’s about all these guys, that’s about all he cared about and I’d be happy to say that, hopefully he’s listening because he knows it’s true.”

That’s right. Bonilla didn’t care about a damn thing. Yet the Mets, in their infinite wisdom … re-acquired him! And then agreed to pay him until he’s 90! Awesome.

And to punctuate the point of how bad those ’92 and ’93 Mets were, Hillman continued:

I got Frank Tanana at the end of his career …  we’re sitting on the bench one day and he said ‘E … I’ve been on some bad teams in my career … but this is the worst … if you go out and pitch well, you’re probably going to lose. But you go out and pitch badly, you’re guaranteed to lose.”

So … Tanana hung out with Tony Robbins, no?

It would have been fun to hear Hillman discuss these things to the press back in 1992, but you saw how Jets rookie Greg McElroy was treated when he basically said the same thing about this year’s Jets lockerroom, so it was probably for the best that it didn’t come out until now. (Besides, Bonilla probably would have wanted to show Eric the Bronx. But good luck Bobby Bo because Hillman is 6’10” and would have crushed you like a bug.) It’s stuff you probably already knew about these teams being awful but when I hear somebody on the team say it, it kinda feels like I was vindicated in absolutely hating guys like Bonilla and Green. So thank you, Eric Hillman. I knew I wasn’t that crazy.

I’m sure those quotes simply fueled your appetite for more, and trust me when I say that these weren’t the only highlights of the interview, so click this link and I promise you will not be sorry (especially when he goes off on Dallas Green … another one of my “favorites”). And for more great stuff like this (and Hillman really was great) then click here (or find the link in the left sidebar) every Wednesday at 8:30PM where Mark and A.J. interview plenty of former Mets like Hillman (Doug Flynn was on this past Wednesday’s show as well). And as an added bonus, you’ll get a short baseball round-up by some guy who likes to talk a lot but needs work mastering the English language. He also kinda sucks, but he tries hard and he could really use some positive encouragement because he’s emotionally fragile.

P.S. In case you were wondering, Hillman now runs Pure Puppy, which provides dog grooming products which are environmentally friendly. The ironic part about this interview was that a twitter friend of mine (and Pirates blogger) was posting random boxscores from games that he went to, and this one came up. Let’s just say it was one of those games that Hillman was, as Tanana would say, guaranteed to lose. Yet I’d still take him over Pelfrey, even at age 45. So perhaps it’s high time for a comeback, E?

But then what would the puppies do?