Legendary Puckett dies too young
On March 6, the Midwest wept.
Kirby Puckett, former Minnesota Twins superstar and Hall of Famer, died after a stroke.
He was 45.
Kirby Puckett was, and will remain, a household name for reasons far beyond his athleticism on the baseball diamond.
No matter if his name was announced over the Metrodome loudspeaker by the late Bob Casey, uttered by a grandma who loved his charm or shouted proudly by a little boy playing sandlot baseball, Puck — as he liked to be called — was in the forefront of the minds of those who knew him or simply watched him play.
The personable Puckett held nothing back and gave himself to the community, an honorable attribute that won over a majority that lived in or around the Minneapolis metropolitan area.
He never forgot the background from which he came, a rough childhood in the tougher parts of Chicago.
While Puckett was still aspiring to reach the professional ranks, he had to meet with recruiters in certain areas of his own hometown, because scouts would not enter certain housing communities that surrounded him.
If there was one beneficial effect of his early years, it would be the game of baseball that Puckett grew to love. That love transformed into a passion and, eventually, a career.
Puckett, though, was much more than a baseball player. Rather, he was a hero, a mentor, a teammate, a citizen and, most of all, a friend.
There is no doubt the Hall of Famer enjoyed every second he stood between the painted lines in the Metrodome.
His .318 lifetime batting average, 10 All-Star appearances and six Gold Gloves most likely meant little to him when measured up to the amount of passion he held for the game.
In his prime playing days, Puckett was a dominating player who could change a game with his presence. The identity of the Minnesota Twins formed around him and grew larger because of him.
That alone is why, no matter how lucrative the contract opposing teams would dangle in front of him, Kirby Puckett played each of his 12 seasons in Minnesota.
“ It wasn’t money that influenced him (to stay), because that is what would have taken him out of here. It was the people,” Ralph Currier, who runs concessions for the greater Minneapolis area, said. “And he was pleasing the people with his performances here.”
Currier, an energetic middle-aged man, first ran into Puckett while serving food at a hospitality luncheon during the first year of Twinsfest, an annual team promotion. His ties with the Twins trace back to a run-in with Halsey Hall, a famed Twins announcer, and frequent house dinners with club owner Carl Pohlad.
Soon after their first luncheon, Currier spotted Puckett at several formal functions and at many Minnesota Timberwolves games in reserved seating.
No matter the menu of the event that Currier spotted Puckett — corporate skyboxes offer extravagant meals — Currier knew what Puckett really deeply desired.
“ Two cheeseburgers, extra onions and lots of pickles,” Currier said. “That was Kirby.”
Currier made it his personal job to round up the burgers with fixings and deliver them himself whenever Puckett came around.
Puckett’s personal entrée preference, a simple burger over an elegant steak dinner, spoke volumes into the character of the lovable lunk.
“ He was very pleased with something as simple as coming up with those cheeseburgers,” Currier said. “That made his day.”
Greatly because of his history, Puckett’s ego never grew larger than reality, a damning frequency too evident in modern athletics.
Puckett’s past could have been his demise, but he chose to become larger than where he came from.
“ He never complained about it. He never made an issue of anything; he was just so plain Jane,” Currier said.
Recognizing the circumstances of his youth was one of Puckett’s motivations for the extensive amount of charitable work and donations he put forth.
Aside from raising money for foundations and funding student’s schooling, Puckett donated memorabilia without anyone calling to ask him.
“ You didn’t have to,” Currier said. “He’d make the call before anyone made the call to him.”
And there was no way Puckett would stay hidden behind social scenes during public functions. He needed the people and needed to be present at many events.
“ He wasn’t one of those guys where you would have to fight your way to get to him,” Currier said. “You could walk all the way across the room, it didn’t matter who he was with, to shake his hand.”
That was just Puck being Puck.
“ He never put anybody off. He had time for everybody, and he took what ever time (he needed),” Currier said. “That used to get him in a lot of trouble with (then-manager Tom Kelly).”
But even Kelly could not argue with the production Puckett put out year after year. After already leading Minnesota to a championship in 1987, Puckett saved his greatest performance for the season finale in 1991.
Following Game 5 of the World Series, when the Twins trailed three games to two, Puckett announced he would take the ball club on his back and win Minnesota another championship.
Game 6 turned out to be one of the greatest playoff performances in the history of the World Series. Puckett transformed into an Atlanta Braves wrecking ball through his production of three of the Twins’ four runs and the spectacular catch that stole a possible home run off the bat of Atlanta’s Ron Gant in the third inning.
NDSU baseball head coach Mitch McLeod picked up tickets for what turned out to be something special.
“ Just being at that game was incredible,” McLeod said.
The Metrodome, white with the waving of Homer Hankies, grew as loud as it ever had been in the eleventh inning, with the score tied at three.
“I remember standing up with my arms in the air as soon as it left his bat,” McLeod said. “I just knew it was gone.”
McLeod sat nearly 20 rows behind where Puckett’s Game 6 walk-off solo home run landed in left field. Although he never heard Jack Buck’s famous call of, “And we’ll see you tomorrow night,” McLeod did watch Puckett gleefully round the bases.
“ (Puckett) played the game the way it was supposed to be played,” NDSU assistant coach B.J. Griffith said.
He played with passion, he played with character and he played at ease.
The culmination of Puckett’s personal success, his attitude toward the public and his typical jolly ole’ self made the allegations of spousal abuse a tough piece to swallow.
“ I saw him a month before (the allegations) with his wife broke loose, and at that time you’d never have known it,” Currier said.
“ People’s first reactions are, ‘Oh God this guy is a wife abuser, this has been going on for years.’ But (ex-wife)Tanya (Puckett) never displayed that and he never displayed that,” Currier said.
The tragic allegations, which also included an alleged incident with a woman in an Eden Prairie, Minn., restaurant, came out after the Hall of Famer’s career was cut short by glaucoma in 1996.
Puckett complained of a black spot on his eye, which proved to be his toughest opponent.
Despite the shortened career and the tarnishing allegations, Puckett will be remembered as a true baseball player, one of a dying breed.
“ During a time of abandonment, he chose to stay loyal,” McLeod said.
At the age of 45, Puckett left a legacy for generations to remember.