Bonilla, Klapisch make peace for good cause

Ever since the Mets’ clubhouse turned into a hostile zone this week, I’ve been asked about a similar episode more than a quarter-century ago. It’s a reasonable question. The parallels are indeed similar: when Jason Vargas threatened to assault Newsday reporter Tim Healey, it brought back memories of Bobby Bonilla vowing to show me the Bronx. The year was 1993 and the Mets’ slugger was ready to fight over a book I had co-written with John Harper called “The Worst Team Money Could Buy.”

It was an unfiltered account of the Mets’ decline from 1988, when they were baseball’s top franchise, to the cesspool they sunk to by 1992. The book came out the following spring and turned Bonilla into my enemy. We had an ugly encounter in the clubhouse which hardly merits re-creating. But, if you insist, it can be easily be found on YouTube. There you’ll see Bobby Bo and I within inches of each other’s faces. At 6-4, 240 he had me by four inches and 40 pounds. I didn’t like my chances.

I can’t say if this incident mirrors the one at Wrigley Field this past weekend, because I don’t know any of the parties involved – Healey, Vargas or manager Mickey Callaway. Between the 18 months I spent with the Yankees researching my book “Inside the Empire” and my current assignments with the New York Times, I haven’t covered a Mets game in over two years. But I do know not every blow-up has to turn into lifetime grudge. Sometimes there’s a way – and a need – to put aside one’s differences for a higher cause.

Bonilla and I actually shook hands in his second go-around with the Mets in 1999, but it wasn’t until last week that we were brought together for real. It turns out we had a mutual acquaintance who badly needed help. His name is Danny Colon, a 54-year-old realtor who was diagnosed with ALS last year. Like Bonilla, Colon is a Bronx-born Puerto Rican. And like me, Colon is an amateur baseball player who can’t let go of the game. We ran in the same adult-league circles for years.

Colon’s diagnosis was a monstrous setback, as anyone with ALS will tell you. Each day becomes a race with the clock, as patients desperately fight to keep control of the little things we all take for granted – flexible muscles and joints, strength in the limbs, even breathing. But Colon’s predicament is worse than most – he’s exhausted his lifetime medical insurance. Unable to work, Colon and his family are running out of money and are facing eviction from their home in Wayne, NJ.

That’s where Bonilla and I entered the picture. We decided to publicly join forces to raise awareness of Danny’s illness and hopefully direct traffic to his GoFundMe account. The point should’ve been obvious to anyone who knows their New York sports history. If Bonilla and I, formal mortal enemies, could be allies then no obstacle can be considered insurmountable. Not even for  someone who’s battling a killer disease without a dollar to his name. Bonilla and I haven’t agreed on much over the years, but we both knew helping Colon was bigger than any 26-year-old dispute over a book.

Indeed, so much had changed for both of us since then. Bonilla had gone from clubhouse enforcer to the executive board of the Players Association. And after stints at the Post and Daily News, including a long run at the Bergen Record, I went from tabloid operative to a veteran writer at the Times. He and I had grown up, moved on. Those YouTube clips seem like another lifetime.

So the two of us hatched a plan to bring Danny’s plight to the public. The Post’s Mike Vaccaro, the gifted sports columnist, would write about this unlikely alliance in his widely-read Sunday column. There would be quotes from both me and Bonilla certifying the truce had elevated to a genuine peace treaty. Vaccaro promised it would run on June 15. And good to his word, the column went up on the Post’s website that Saturday night, highlighted by Bonilla’s proclamation:

“I’ve put aside my past differences with Bob Klapisch. I’m teaming up with him to help Danny Colon with his fight with ALS.”

I added a second, salient thought.

“It’s the craziest thing in the world that we’re allies, but it’s also a perfect karmic ending to that incident in the clubhouse. I’d like to forget about it as I’m sure Bobby would too. … The fact that we’re on the same side now, joined for a higher cause, shows you nothing is impossible.”

Help for Colon was coming from another direction too. Ray Negron, the Yankees’ community outreach representative, will have his play, “Bat Boy: a Yankees Miracle” produced at the Yogi Berra Museum in Montclair, N.J., on Aug. 5, and all proceeds will go to the Colon family.

But the biggest payoff came on Sunday morning at 6 a.m., when I received a text from former-Met Ron Darling, now an SNY broadcaster.  Darling has had his own struggles – he was recently diagnosed with thyroid cancer – but that didn’t stop him from responding to Vaccaro’s column before he’d even gotten out of bed.

“What’s the best way for my Foundation to make a generous contribution to the Colon family?” Darling asked. I provided the link to the GoFundMe page. Within days Darling had sent Colon $5000. The money will go towards rent, food and medicine.

Goes to show: nothing is impossible, ever.

Featured Image: Al Bello / Getty Images Sport