By: Alex Patt

The late 90s and early 2000s were fun right? It was a time of big home run sluggers that mashed baseballs into orbit, and there was plenty of that at Wrigley Field during that time. Sammy Sosa being the obvious one of course, but he was not the only Cub that hit some memorable home runs during that era. Our latest #RememberThatCub features the Glennallen Hill, the outfielder with tree trunk sized arms.

Hill played 13 years in the majors and played with seven different teams including the Cubs, Mariners, Giants, Indians, Angels, Blue Jays and Yankees. He had two stints on the North Side from 1993–1994 and mid-1998 through mid-2000.

Hill came to the Cubs his first time around on August 19th, 1993 in a trade that sent Candy Maldonado to the Indians. He signed back with the Cubs as a free agent through 1994 and then went to the Giants in 1995. Hill was part of the 1998 team that won the NL Wild Card in game 163 against the Giants when he was claimed off waivers from the Mariners on July 6th of that year. He resigned as a free agent prior to the 1999 season and remained a Cub until July 21st, 2000 when he was traded to the Yankees for Ben Ford and Oswaldo Mairena.

With the Cubs in total he slashed .304/.360/.906 with 59 home runs, 167 RBIs and 4.7 bWAR in 331 games. Hill was mainly a utility player who did not play every day, he would play matchups and would share left field with Henry Rodriquez in his 1998–2000 Cubs stint. He never qualified for an All Star game but was still a valuable player to have on the team. In 1999 he reached 20 home runs while playing in only 99 games, so just imagine if he was a full-time player.

Now we get to his greatest Cubs moment, which took place on May 11th, 2000 at Wrigley Field. Hill came to bat in the bottom of the second against Brewers pitcher Steve Woodard as Chip Carey on TV asked his partner, “Do you like the (Hill’s) red shoes for the blue shoes better?” The Woodard pitch abruptly interrupted the question when Hill smashed it out of Wrigley Field and onto the roof of the yellow building on the corner of Waveland and Kenmore Avenue. “It’s got to be the shoes folks!” Carey exclaimed as Hill trotted around the bases with the 21,995 people cheering.

To put a little perspective on that blast, here is a crude yet fairly accurate overhead photo showing the path of that ball which traveled over 500 feet.

Estimated path of Hill’s rooftop home run (Google Earth)

Hill’s final major league season was with the Angels in 2001 before retiring. He went on to do some coaching with the Rockies organization for a number of seasons including being the MLB team’s first base coach in 2007. He was one of the first base coaches to wear a helmet after the death of Mike Coolbaugh, a minor league coach he was killed by a line drive to the head. Today Hill manages the Albuquerque Isotopes.

It is of note that Glenallen Hill did admit in 2008 that he was doing steroids during his career. His name was on the Mitchell Report and he let it out before the 2008 spring training season. It seemed pretty obvious looking back considering his size. But hey, he still gave us some entertainment.

Do you #RememberThatCub?

Alex Patt is a contributor for Wrigley Rapport and other sports podcasts and publications. You can follow him and his work on twitter @chifanpatt1