Paul O’Neill on Tim McCarver Show

Since my Iowa Hawkeyes are not playing this afternoon I was flipping through the channels and was happily surprised to find that Paul O’Neill was the guest on the Tim McCarver Show today. If you missed it, here are a few highlights:

• Paul assured McCarver that Andy Pettitte does still exist, and that he is still in contact with his former teammates.
• Paul’s sister Molly is a food writer for the NY Times and has quite a few cookbooks out. She often takes her family with her to restaurants she is reviewing. Pretty awesome perk for the rest of the O’Neill family, if you ask me!
• Paul talked about the fact that during his career he was on the winning side of three perfect games and two no-hitters. The first perfect game was with the Cincinnati Reds in 1988 with Tom Browning on the mound. It was a unique game all-around because they waited out a long rain delay and didn’t begin playing until 9:30pm. The other two perfect games, of course, belonged to David Wells in ’98 and David Cone in ’99.
• McCarver showed the clip of the Yankee fans chanting O’Neill’s name during his last home game on Nov. 1, 2001. Paul said watching it still gives him goosebumps. It gave me goosebumps too. Definitely one of the many great moments in Yankees history.

Nothing earth-shattering of course, but Paul is a great guy and it is always fun to watch interviews with him. If you can catch a rerun of the show it is definitely worth watching. There is a lot of footage of the late ’90s World Series games and I guarantee at some point you will say “Oh wow, look how young Derek Jeter/Andy Pettitte/Chipper Jones looked!” However, seeing this interview was a bit bittersweet as it made me wish Paul was back up in the YES booth calling games. Is it April 5th yet?