Kirby Without Tears

“I’m just a plain kind of guy,” he says. “That’s the way I was brought up, and that’s what it comes down to. I don’t have to be flashy or flaunt what I got. I wear a watch and a wedding ring. No gold chains and such. To each his own. I’m not knocking anybody. But I’m just an old-blue-jeans-and-tennis-shoe type of guy. Always have been, always will be.”

George Will once wrote: “[T]here is an inevitable poignancy inherent in the careers of even the best professional athletes . . . , [but] poignancy is not the same thing as sadness.” The game of baseball, Will noted, “is a remarkably cheerful business.”

Even in his postcareer semi-anonymity (the most anonymity he will likely ever enjoy), Puckett is nothing if not both cheerful and cheering. He still lights up whatever room he’s in. He still (to update Patrick Reusse’s simply perfect tribute) makes us smile. If our heart sinks at the sight of that defunct right eye, it’s because we feel sorry at least as much for ourselves as for Kirby, deprived as we are of the joy of watching him play his game. Kirby isn’t crying. Perspectively gifted, Kirby insists he’s having the time of his life, and it’s impossible not to believe him.

For the next three years Puckett will remain on the Twins’ executive masthead, helping management evaluate young talent but mainly responsible for currying what little favor the organization might still enjoy with its once fanatical public. (“Wherever he goes, it’s golden,” says Mona, who sits on the club’s Community Fund committee that Puckett now chairs.) Beyond that, he will continue to serve as a spokesperson for the national Glaucoma Foundation, and appear on talk shows and at eye clinics around the country urging folks of all ages to have their eyes screened for the condition. If he’s not the ubiquitous commercial presence he clearly could be in the Twin Cities (“People would eat, wear, what have you whatever Kirby stood up for around here,” Mona says), it’s by all accounts because he doesn’t need either the money or the exposure. He is fiercely proud of what he’s accomplished, on his own and with his Twins teammates, and for the time being, at least, he’s willing to rest on his laurels.

Comparisons are made between Puckett and the Wolves’ spectacular man-child Kevin Garnett. “I love KG,” says Puckett, a rabid fan and sometime mentor. “He’s still a kid, but he has a lot of talent. And he loves to play the game. You can see it in his eyes. What do they call it? The eye of the tiger.” But whatever the two have in common, Puckett is quick to remind the younger man of a significant difference. “I’ve told him,” Puckett says with a grin, “‘This is not your town until you guys win the championship. Until you do, it’s still ours.’”

To me, by way of a valediction, he says: “Tell everybody they don’t have to worry about Kirby. All the reports are good. I can see. I haven’t hit anything lately. I’m doing good. I got no regrets. I’m enjoying every day.”

William Swanson is a senior editor of Mpls.St.Paul Magazine.