Kirby Without Tears

Puckett says his biggest worry at the time was what life would be like at home in Edina. “It’s a huge adjustment for you and your wife,” he explains. “For all those years you were on the road so much she got used to her own time and space, without you being around every day—and now, all of a sudden, here you are. And I worried about the kids. How are they going to accept you after you’ve been gone so much?” He laughs and says, “Frankly, I was kind of hoping they’d say, ‘Daddy, you do whatever you want,’ but actually they love having me around. That’s why, if you see me out and about, I usually got at least one of my two kids along with me.”

The fact is, away from the Metrodome and his annual celebrity pool tournament for Children’s HeartLink and other charity work, Puckett has maintained an exceedingly low profile since his retirement. He and Tonya are said to entertain infrequently, and he himself says that even his neighbors see little of him. While he talks about them often, he deftly keeps the media away from daughter Catherine, nine, and seven-year-old Kirby Jr. Beyond the occasional sighting at the Wave (where he’s been known to bring first his Suburban and then one of his cars in for a wash on a Saturday afternoon), the nearby Davanni’s pizza emporium, and courtside at the Timberwolves’ home games, he is almost invisible. Old teammates shrug and say they don’t know much about his private life. Kent Hrbek says, “People assume that Kirby and I are joined at the hip, but the truth is I hardly ever see him. I don’t know who he hangs out with.” Even the popular notion that Kirby and Hrby are inseparable fishing partners is mistaken. “I’ve never sat in a boat with the man,” Hrbek says.

No one describes him as reclusive, but for a guy who’s willing to let a near-stranger touch-test the size of his eyeballs, Puckett is surprisingly guarded. Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor says he and Puckett sat side by side at the basketball games for at least a year before Puckett opened up and they (and their families) became close friends. “I wouldn’t say he was shy,” Taylor says, “but he’s certainly protective of his family and private time.”

Meanwhile, more than a dozen years of living out of a suitcase has apparently cured him of wanderlust; spending time with Tonya and the kids at home (he also cares for a teenaged niece) and wetting a line in his favorite fishing hole (the name of which he declines to reveal) seems to keep him happy. He has zero interest, he says, in drawing more attention to himself.