I’ve never been the kind of sports fan that felt compelled to collect signed memorabilia. When I was young I had a baseball card collection, but I wasn’t the kid that had them tucked away in hermetically sealed plastic to preserve their value. My baseball cards had wrinkled edges and cherry-coke stains on them because I was always using them to play imaginary games on my bedroom floor. I’m not even sure where they all wound up, but there is a reasonable chance that they suffered the clichéd demise of being tossed out by my mom sometime during my teen years. The one piece of sports ‘junk’ that I keep around my apartment is a baseball signed by Kirby Puckett. When I heard on the radio this morning that he had died, I was reminded of why the baseball meant enough to me to still be sitting on my desk almost twenty years after it had been signed.
Growing up in the Minneapolis/St. Paul suburbs, everyone loved Kirby Puckett. He was our Michael Jordan. He was our Wayne Gretzsky. He was our ‘Puck’. In 1987 he led the Twins to their first Championship. In 1991, he did it again, and his Game 6 performance is known even to non-Minnesotans as “The Puckett Game”. But we didn’t love him because of his ability. An athlete can be admired for his talents, but to be loved is something else entirely. We loved him because of the way he played the game like a little leaguer. Part of it was the smile. He never stopped smiling. I remember him standing on first base after getting a single, laughing and smiling with the opposing first baseman. I remember him jogging back to the dugout, grinning after stealing a homerun by bouncing off of the center field wall like a pinball. He always looked like he had just realized that someone was paying him to play baseball.
The kids loved Kirby because of how he looked, too. He was almost one of us. He was 5 feet, 8 inches, 230 pounds of kid, scooting around the Astroturf in center field like a roadrunner from the Robert Taylor Homes. Most center fielders have some grace about the way they play, or at the minimum some obvious athleticism that colors their movements. To a kid accustomed to running and jumping like a normal human being, a professional baseball player roaming a gigantic expanse of outfield turf is a magical being. A Titan with a thunderbolt for an arm, legs like a gazelle, and power the other way. But Kirby was funny lookin’. He was squat. He was the fat kid, the one that waddles everywhere he goes. If he was standing still you would wonder what the third base coach was doing in the middle of the outfield with his gut hanging over his belt. He didn’t look like he should be able to do the things he could do. When he jumped out of the batter’s box and took off down the first base line, he transformed from a pudgy kid into a cartoon hero, and you knew that he was going to be safe at second, because the coyote never catches the road-runner. Watching him play the outfield from the cheap seats, he sometimes appeared to have no legs. Just a gigantic head sitting atop a round pile of uniform. His legs were just a blur. And then he’d have the ball for an instant before it was rocketing back into the second baseman, leaving imaginary vapor trails behind it.
When I was nine I waited in line for 4 hours at the local Shinder’s baseball card and comic book shop to have Kirby autograph a baseball for me. He was only supposed to be there for 2 hours, but when the time ran up and the line was still out the door he kept signing. I don’t know how long he sat there, but when I finally reached the front of the line two hours after he should have been gone he was still smiling and laughing, patting kids on the head and giving out high fives. I don’t remember if I said anything to him, but I can remember how he seemed to be enjoying sitting in the chair and signing his name a billion times.
Puck went blind in one eye, and had to retire before he was ready to be done. He was 36, but he was still at his peak. He always said that he didn’t regret how his career ended, but he fell on hard times. The midget super hero ran into legal troubles. He became obese. His wife left him. When he was photographed at a benefit or a charity golf tournament the smile wasn’t the same. And even though I’d never known him, and I don’t usually relate to celebrities, I felt sorry for him. He’d brought so much happiness to me and so many other kids in the 80s and 90s in Minnesota that it did seem right for him to be so unhappy.
Before I left for work today I took the baseball Puck signed for me when I was a kid out of the plastic shell it rests in on my desk. I’m not sure why I keep it in the case. The ball is a little marked up and dirty from sitting in a mitt for a few years and the bottom of the ‘y’ in Kirby is smeared. I don’t think I’d be able to sell it now, even though he’s a dead Hall of Famer. Not that I’d want to.
Looking at the baseball I had signed halfway across the country, 20 years ago, made me feel old. Thinking about a puffed up Kirby Puckett dying of a stroke at the age of 46 made me feel mortal. I sat there for a minute, thinking about what a fucking depressing way that was to start the day. I wanted to go back to bed.
I know it sounds cheesy and trite, but I pictured Puck catching a ball and then bouncing off the plastic baggie/wall they used to put up in left-center field because the Twins shared the Metro Dome with the Vikings, and it made me feel better. I thought about the way the PA man, Bob Casey, used to call his name when he came up to bat. “Batting third, for your Minnesota Twins, number 34, KiiiiiirbEEEEEEEEEEEEEE PAAAAAAAACKIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!” I could hear it in my head, and it sent a chill up my spine. I finally put the ball down and drove into work.
I’ve been sitting here all day, trying to get some work done, but it’s not going so well. I keep daydreaming like a little kid, thinking about baseball and Puck. And damned if I wasn’t craving a Dome Dog with relish and mustard for lunch.
Labels: deep, sports reporting, The Minny Apple
