No longer the king of the hill

It's a great day for the Newark Bears: The defending Atlantic League champions have re-signed Bobby Hill.

No, not the kid from King of the Hill.



No, not Renko's partner from Hill Street Blues.



This is the Bobby Hill who was drafted by the White Sox in the second round of the 1999 amateur draft, but super agent Scott Boras told him to hold out and instead play the 2000 season as a shortstop with the Newark Bears. Hill, a 22-year-old switch-hitter, hit .326 with a .442 OBP and stole a franchise-record 81 bases. He also had 13 home runs and 82 RBIs.

As I've mentioned here before, I saw Hill play a few times that year. Now, the Atlantic League isn't anywhere near the majors -- it's mostly has-beens, could'a-beens and never-wuzzes. So the level of talent wasn't great, but still, Hill was just on another planet. If you've played beer league softball, you know how you can spot the ringer 'cause he's the one guy shows up wearing actual baseball pants? Well, in the Atlantic League that year, Hill was that guy. Everyone else comes up to the plate hacking and slashing; he'd be the guy taking a strike and fouling off tough pitches and holding up on sliders in the dirt and driving the ball the other way. He could run, he could hit, he could field. You just knew he'd be a star.

The following year, Hill was drafted by the Cubs and eventually signed with them. He hit .301 (.394 OBP) with 20 SBs in Double-A; in 2002, he hit .280 (.367 OBP) with 29 SB in Triple-A, got promoted to the majors and hit .253 (.327 OBP) in 190 ABs as a second baseman. But the Cubs sent him back to Triple-A in 2003, where he hit .269 (.339 OBP), then near the end of the season traded him (as the player to be named later) in the deal that landed them Aramis Ramirez.

Hill played almost all of 2004 in the majors, hitting .266 with a .353 OBP in 233 ABs (but 126 games) for the Pirates playing second and third. You'd think that'd be enough to stick the following year, but you don't know the Pirates. He again bounced between Triple-A and the majors in 2005, hitting .241 (.336 OBP) in Triple-A and .269 (.343 OBP) in the bigs. Then he got traded to the Padres -- for a pitcher named Clayton Hamilton -- and spent all of 2006 in the minors. He hit .282 with a .396 OBP, but the Padres never called him up. They released him at the end of the year and he missed all of 2007 after undergoing back surgery.

I think it's a smart move for Hill. Maybe GMs don't like what happened with Boras after the '99 draft. Maybe Hill has fungus on his shower shoes. Or maybe they're just more comfortable with guys like Mark Bellhorn - a guy ahead of him on the depth chart with the Cubs and the Padres, even though Bells hit .209 in '03 and .190 in '06.

Whatever the reason, it seems obvious he wasn't going to get a chance to make the bigs, even as a utilityman, despite a respectable MLB career batting average of .262 (.343 OBP) in 523 AB, and .277 (.367 OBP) in 1,424 AB in the minors. Now he's 30, and it seems most of his speed has left him, and who knows if he can still play short. The Bears might be his last chance to showcase what's left of his skills and maybe get a ticket back to the big leagues.

I'm hoping to see him in Newark this summer and see something of the kid who looked like a future star just eight years ago. Even if it's just a glimpse.