2010
Joey Hilton was a huge baseball fan as a kid. Joey was born in Chicago, Illinois. Growing up, he would always cheer for his beloved Bruins, and had some of the best season ticket seats in the packed, rowdy Bruins Park of the 80s, with his dad being the manager. His grandpa was one of the founders of the ULB and served as Ryan Robblestock’s assistant for many years, earning good money off of the league. The money was passed down to Joey’s father, Mike Hilton. Mike attempted to play in the ULB, but didn’t make it passed AA in the Miami Flamingos organization. Mike later managed the Bruins in the early 80s, winning the Bruins’ 9th and 10th world series in 1982 and ‘83, and managed the team until 1995, when he was ordered to be fired by longtime owner Willis Smith. Joey bought a small store space and started a business of his own, “Hilton Sports”, a sports equipment/gear company that quickly blew up into one of the biggest sports companies in the world. Joey was still an avid Bruins fan all throughout tenure as owner of Hilton Sports. Once he had enough money piled up, Joey looked towards owning something else. A sports team. More specifically, a Chicago team. It didn’t take long for Hilton to place the winning bid on the Chicago Bruins, his favorite team in the world, in 2010, following the selling of Hilton Sports. Everyone had had enough of the team being ‘just alright’, a term used by ablsnewsandrumors.com to describe the Bruins almost every year during Willis Smith’s ownership of the team, but he was sure that that was soon to change. It was time to start a new era. The age of the Bruins always being mediocre was out, and so was the GM. “I think I know the man who I want to be the new GM of Bruins baseball.”