Kirby Puckett: 1960-2006.

When I moved to Minneapolis for the summer in 1993 and again to stay in the summer of 1994 (I was there for six years, moving to Austin in 2000), there was nobody that was more popular in the state of Minnesota than Kirby Puckett. Nobody. Not even close.

Puckett was the unequivocal leader on a team that defied baseball odds. The Twins were a small market team in every sense of the word, yet they were able to win the World Series twice by hopping on Puck’s broad shoulders, in 1987 and 1991. In the epic Game 1 of the ’91 Classic, it was Puckett who robbed Ron Gant with a leaping grab at the wall and then hit a game winning home run in the 11th inning to give the Twinks and Jack Morris a 1-0 win.

Puck put up very good, almost great numbers during his career. He hit .318 for his career and averaged almost 200 hits per year during his 12 year big league career, a career cut short when he got glaucoma in one eye before the 1996 season. It was not his stats, however, that made him a first ballot Hall-of-Famer with the baseball writers. Instead, I would imagine, it was his smile, his leadership, and his legendary stature despite his lack of stature. Puck got in because he was a very good player who was a better guy and larger than life in the process.

When glaucoma forced him out of the game, Puck’s life, from all accounts, fell apart. His wife left him after accusing him of a history of violence and cheating, and he was accused of sexual assault by another woman (later acquitted), in addition to putting a lot of weight on.

This apparent dichotomy between the public superstar who always had a smile on and the private man who struggled with issues like the rest of us, and perhaps did not deal with them as effectively as he should have illustrates the danger in treating our sports heroes as our role models. Maybe Charles Barkley was right after all. We have seen further evidence of this when Kobe Bryant, although having rape charges dropped, paid a reported $5 million to the alleged victim to make the ugly incident go away.

I was mad at Puckett. I was never a Twins fan, but the guy was likeable, and I had a lot of friends who loved this guy. And he wasn’t the guy they fell in love with on the fields. Sometimes, as a sports fan, you want the persona that is created in the field and in front of the microphones and by the p.r. and advertising agencies to be real. You want that to be the real guy. When it turns out that the guy who you thought was real was as much a fantasy as the players you drafted in your Fantasy League, it is disappointing. So, I was mad, and I rooted for him to be convicted, because where there is smoke there is fire and how could a guy with so much going for him and who meant so much to so many potentially toss it all away for no reason?

But now I realize that life is complicated. Until and unless you can walk a mile in someone’s shoes, it is difficult to judge them too much. Because we never have all the facts and even if we did, don’t we have enough heavy issues to deal with in our day to day lives?

So in the end, Puckett helped teach me a valuable lesson, one that my mother has been preaching since I was a young dude. Sports are just sports, and they are not life and death, and there are more important things (at least a few). So in the end, I forgave him, and I thanked Puckett, for helping to shed some light on what is important.

And now Kirby Puckett is dead. Boom. Out of nowhere. Two days ago he was just a retired 45 year-old ex-ballplayer. Now he is the second youngest member of baseball’s Hall of Fame to die (after Lou Gehrig). 45 years old. It hits hard. It makes me feel mortal, and vulnerable, and a little scared. If it can happen to a Hall of Fame ballplayer, it can happen to any of us, any time, any where. Nobody is promised tomorrow, so make the most of today.

I will still root my butt off for all my teams. I will be yelling and screaming for Shelden and J.J. to cut down the nets in Indianapolis next month, and for Jimmy Rollins to break Joe D’s hitting streak, and for the Birds to bounce back nicely next year. But if they come up short, I can still go and kiss my kids, tell them I love them, and teach them a valuable lesson in the city of brotherly love. There’s always next year. Hopefully.

Rest in Peace, Kirby. Kirby Puckett 1960-2006.