Kirby Puckett is Dead

9/15/09

Kirby Puckett inducted into Hall of Fame

The Kirby to be remembered, heading for home plate.

In the waning days of the Minnesota Twins playing baseball at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, built to make watching baseball in Minnesota more pleasurable in an expanded baseball season, to a new open air , baseball only stadium, I noticed several large banners of Twins with retired numbers and one of Jackie Robinson. I remarked to my son and his girlfriend, Heidi, that I didn't think Jackie Robinson was ever a Twin. They said that all major league teams retired Jackie Robinson's number 42. I then asked, "I wonder what Kirby Puckett is doing now?". Heidi, a girl who has lived almost her entire life in Iowa, looked mortified at me and said, "Kirby Puckett is dead". How could I have forgotten an event in 2006 akin to Minnesotans, as the moving in the dead of night of the Baltimore Colts to Indianapolis was to Marylanders?

Kirby Puckett Note:
Kirby never did fully recover from his shortened baseball career due to glaucoma. He became fat, had a meaningless job as a Twin promotional person, divorced, and had a lengthy trail for accosting and dragging a woman into a restaurant bathroom, for which he was acquitted.

Puckett Facts:
1) Died at age 42 from a stroke.
2) Second youngest player induced to the Hall of Fame. Lou Gehrig, the youngest.
3) Highest lifetime batting average of any major league player in second half of twentieth century.
4) One of two players to get 2,000 hits in first ten years of career.
5) Played for Twins his entire career.
6) Lead Twins to two World Championships.

This is my tribute to the passage of time, people, and events.