NEWSMAKER: KIRBY PUCKETTFrom humble beginnings to the Hall of Fame
CBC Sports Online | Feb. 28,
2006
Kirby Puckett played baseball with youthful exuberance rarely seen away from the sandlot. (CP Photo)
Even Kirby Puckett's death had Hall of Fame overtones.
When the perennial all-star and Minnesota Twin fan favourite died Monday at age 45, no Hall-of-Famer but one died younger. That one was the legendary Lou Gehrig.
In a 12-year career cut short by the glaucoma that blinded him in his right eye, Puckett was an all-star in all but two seasons, won six Gold Gloves, and helped engineer two World Series victories for the Minnesota Twins.
Though his post-baseball career was marred by allegations of spousal abuse, and a sexual assault trial which saw him acquitted, his rise to baseball superstardom was remarkable both because of his stature and his origins.
The youngest of six sons and three daughters, Puckett was born in 1960 in Chicago and raised there. When he was young, his family moved to the Robert Taylor Homes on the city's south side.
Completed in 1962, the public housing project consisted of over two dozen 16-storey high-rise buildings. It was trumpeted as a community that would replace previous ghettos in the area, where tenant selection would be rigorous and residents would have a voice in their living conditions.
But by the time Puckett developed an interest in baseball as a young boy, the project was already becoming a bastion of crime, drugs and poverty.
Idolizing Chicago Cub greats Ernie Banks and Billy Williams, along with Willie Mays, Puckett escaped the temptations by playing ball on his own, or with friends such as Michael Armstrong.
"Every morning at 5 o'clock, I'd go play ball with him," Armstrong
told the Chicago Tribune. "The walls were kind of thin. He always
hit on the wall, and I knew it was him. He'd hit on the wall and I'd
go downstairs and play baseball. We played for hours and hours."
Puckett remembered those days, as well as his late mother Catherine in his wistful 2001 Hall of Fame speech.
"And mom's probably looking down right now and thinking about all those spankings she gave me for hitting balls through neighbours' windows and breaking lamps and breaking everything in the house," he told the assembled at Cooperstown, N.Y.
His mother and father, William, moved the family when Puckett was 12. He soon entered Calumet High School in the city's Auburn-Gresham district at a mere 5-foot-4 inches in height.
His diminutive size at the nearly all-African-American high school didn't stop him from making the baseball team, as a third baseman. Though he gained four inches in height by the end of his tenure, the combination of his size and underwhelming numbers generated zero offers from pro teams or colleges.
After high school ended, he found a job at a Ford assembly plant, but was laid off. His fortunes changed when he attended a Kansas Royals tryout camp.
In attendance was Bradley University baseball coach Dewey Kalmer. The coach successfully recruited Puckett for the school, located in Peoria, Ill.
While Puckett, now an outfielder, had a decent freshman season, his future became uncertain when his father died of a stroke.
"He was ready to quit, but I told him no," Kalmer told the Peoria Journal Star. "I told the Triton (junior college) coach to take him, that he was going to be drafted."
Triton Junior College, located 14 miles northwest of Chicago in River Grove, allowed Puckett to be closer to his mother.
He soon began to flourish and show the first flashes of the superstar he would become in the pros. Demonstrating the unique blend of power and speed, he hit .472 and stole 42 bases in his lone season with Triton.
"I knew he was going to play pro baseball," Triton coach Bob Symonds
told the Journal, a Chicago community newspaper, prior to Puckett's
Halll of Fame induction. "He was different. His approach to the game
and to life in general was different from the rest of the players.
He never let anything stop him from reaching his goals."
Puckett also developed the persona that would be familiar in but a few years. Now approaching a rock-solid 200 pounds, he started shaving his head and had "Kirby" tattooed on his arm.
But the player never forgot his Triton roots.
"I am in the Hall of Fame because of the way Bob Symonds taught me how to play baseball," Puckett said. "He took me under his wing and was a coach, father and brother all in one. I give him all the credit for the player and man that I am today."
In the following year's draft, Minnesota selected him with the No. 3 pick – two below outfielder Kash Beauchamp, selected by the Toronto Blue Jays.
Puckett made his major-league debut on May 8, 1984, hitting four singles against the California Angels. Even with that fast start, it took two years and the help of former great and batting coach Tony Oliva before he would start putting up the power numbers he did in college.
But from Day One, he was a huge hit with his teammates.
"He's got this charisma," Al Newman told Sports Illustrated in 1987. "He's always smiling. I've never heard him booed. When I first came here I said, 'How can this guy throw? How can he hit?' He's the eighth wonder of the world."
That appeal spread to the fans, as much for his cherubic look as his feats on the field. Puckett's stature, however, belied a physical strength that was legendary in the club's weightroom.
His career and the Minnesota Twins would soon never be the same again.
Puckett left an indelible mark. His number was retired at Bradley University despite only one season there, the ballpark at Triton was renamed Symonds/Puckett field, and Twins fans walk Kirby Puckett Place to get to the Metrodome.
