Kirby Puckett

I knew I was going to fit right in at college and in Minnesota when, a few weeks into my first semester at Mac, a bunch of people, still more or less strangers, gathered to watch the Twins win game six of the 1991 World Series, a victory famously enabled by Kirby Puckett's abilities on both sides of the bat. And while he was by no means a hero of mine, I was still saddened when Puckett died - amid some ignominy - yesterday. Jim Souhan's elegiac column in today's Strib sums up the man and the player:

Puckett's tomorrows served as painful reminders of his yesterdays. He became our Roy Hobbs, our King Lear. Shakespeare didn't write tragedies about the middle class. He toppled monarchs, and if ever Minnesota enjoyed the presence of sporting royalty, it was in the cubist form of Puck.