When I heard yesterday the Hall of Fame baseball player Kirby Puckett had suffered a stroke, I meant to write a short post about it, but never got around to it. Today, comes much sadder news.
Kirby Puckett, the Hall of Fame outfielder who rose from a Chicago housing project to win almost all the honors, accolades and rewards professional baseball could bestow, died yesterday in a Phoenix hospital after a stroke. He was 45.
Sad news, and he was truly a baseball legend:
During 12 seasons in the American League, Mr. Puckett, whose stocky, 5-foot-8-inch frame seemed to radiate power, amassed a career batting average of .318 with the Minnesota Twins and helped lead the team to two world championships.
Beyond his prowess as a fearsome right-handed hitter with 207 career home runs and 1,085 runs batted in, Mr. Puckett was adroit afield, winning the Gold Glove award for defensive play six times.
Moreover, he was known for projecting a cheerful good nature and infectious enthusiasm for the game that made him one of the most popular figures on the playing field, in the clubhouse and among baseball fans of the upper Midwest during a career that began in 1984 and continued through the end of the 1995 season.
Selected by the Twins in the first round of the 1982 amateur draft, he made his major league debut May 8, 1984, and amassed 165 base hits in 128 games, finishing with an average only four points below .300, the gold standard for batters.
The next year, he had 199 hits and finished with a .288 average. He finished below .300 only two more times in the next 10 years.
In one of those years, 1988, he finished with 234 hits and an average of .356. In 1989, he led the league in batting with .339.
His plaque in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., describes him as “a proven team leader with an ever-present smile and infectious exuberance.”
As a defensive standout, it says, he roamed center field “with elegance and style” and would as a matter of routine scale the walls of the outfield to catch opponents’ drives, often robbing them of home runs.
“This is a sad day for the Minnesota Twins, Major League Baseball and baseball fans everywhere,” Twins owner Carl Pohlad said in a statement. “A tremendous teammate, Kirby will always be remembered for his never-ending hustle, infectious personality, trademark smile and commitment to the community. There will never be another ‘Puck.’ ”
Indeed.
