As a right hander, Kirby had a career batting average of .318. The last right hander with as good an average was this fella named Joe Dimaggio.
Posted on 03/06/2006 5:11:04 PM PST by daler
PHOENIX — Twins Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett died tonight.
Puckett suffered a massive stroke Sunday morning at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz., and underwent surgery. He had been transferred to St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix.
Family members assembled at the hospital Monday to make the decision on life support. The people with knowledge of Puckett’s condition said he was expected to be removed from the life support sometime Monday.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
My condolences to the Puckett family, Friends, Minnesota Twins and MLB.
that's weird you brought up tony gwynn because i was just thinking the same thing.....
For no reason I can understand I loved his name. It just sounded like a great baseball name to me.
RIP Kirby
God bless you Kirby, and " May flights of angles sing thee to thy rest."
Fuller disclosure: Palmer got a huge boost in Game Two, 1966 World Series, by Willie Davis's out-of-character three errors in the fifth inning (two flies lost in the sun, one jaw-dropping throwing error), handing the Orioles three unearned runs. (Jim Palmer: "In the fifth inning, Willie Davis dropped two fly balls in center field. And after the world knew he had trouble fielding, he threw a ball into the dugout to show he had a great arm.")
Until that happened, the Orioles couldn't pry a run out of Sandy Koufax, not even with Frank Robinson (who was in the best position to know, having faced Koufax for years in the National League) warning his mates before the game, "If it starts at the belt, take it, because it's going to choke you."
Walter Alston lifted Koufax in the sixth primarily to save him for a potential Game Five (it never came; Wally Bunker and Dave McNally outpitched the Dodgers to finish the unlikely sweep), but Boog Powell to this day will tell you of an exchange he had with Koufax at an Old-Timers Game many years later: He said, "If I had one thing to do over in my life, I'd love to pitch that game again." I'm sure he regretted it. I think what he was saying was, "You guys didn't see the best I had." What he had was pretty good. He might have been hurtin' but he was bringin'.
And Jim Palmer's catcher on the day, Andy Etchebarren, told Koufax's biographer Jane Leavy: The first time up, I'm hitting eighth, Palmer is in the on-deck circle, I take two strikes, swing at the third, the three hardest fastballs I've ever seen. When I was walking back, Jimmy Palmer looks at me and said, "You had no chance." You just say, "Shit and goddamn, I ain't never seen anything come up here that quick."
Behavior caused by brain damge does not in and of itself excuse the behavior, but it should be a mitigating factor in determining whether to let it stay in the past or to use it to denegrate the man relentlessly on the day of his death.
There was never any definitive diagnosis beyond his broken jaw and concussion, but to a person everyone associated with Kirby says he was a different person from that day forward. Taking that into account, along with his subsequent vision problems, and now his death at a very young age from a stroke; and it paints a vivid picture of a once proud but humble man doing and saying things that he could no longer control and did not recognize as being abhorrant behavior.
P.S. The real Baltimore pitching star of Game One, 1966 World Series: Moe Drabowsky, with that eleven-strikeout relief performance after he spelled Dave McNally...
If you think that I am impressed by how much money he made, I am not. He was an athlete, nothing more. Was he more special than a cop, doctor, ditch digger or street sweeper because he could hit a baseball? Hardly.
I like baseball as much as the next guy but I don't worship them.
As I said at the outset, RIP. I don't see him as a hero though.
Tony C was my favorite Red Sox player when I was a kid.
Rest in peace, Kirby. Minnesota, and all of baseball, mourns.
Pleasant guy, great player.
Now batting, Kirrrrrby Puckett!
A Braves fan.
I'll join in those that are mourning Kirby tonight. He beat my beloved Atlanta Braves in the 1991 World Series, still a hard loss for me after 15 years.
I interviewed Kirby in 1985. I had a small time radio sports show back then. He was a good guy, a happy guy.
I had a stroke too, in September of 04. I'm two years older than Kirby. I survived and have recovered. He didn't. It hits close to home.
God rest you, Kirby.
Good statement about the man. Thanks.
Bullspit it has. If Puckett had personal problems, I ain't heard of them.
The guy was truly a class act.
As a right hander, Kirby had a career batting average of .318. The last right hander with as good an average was this fella named Joe Dimaggio.
Excellent study!
Jorge Posada has those cab door open ears.
Different professions invite differing specialities, even heroisms, if you don't count that a police officer is likelier to have his life on the line than the doctor (unless he's in a battle zone), a ditch digger (assuming there isn't a complete putz working the crane behind him), or a street sweeper (assuming he isn't trying to sweep the street at the height of rush hour).
Even cops, doctors, ditch diggers, and street sweepers are only human, with all the foolishnesses to which human men and women are prone. It is one thing to suggest an athlete may not be as vital, metaphysically, as one or another of the aforesaid yeomen. But, on the other hand, few if any of the aforesaid yeomen (unless you count, say, a big-city police officer, once in awhile) go to work day in and day out with audiences up to 55,000 people in one place watching them do their jobs, ready to abuse them (sometimes physically) when they fail, even as they might adore them if they succeed.
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