Bye Kirby

My Minnesota Twins cap replaced my Widespread Panic hat yesterday morning, in celebration of spring training. As a kid I wasn’t really into sports, but with no compelling sports teams in the southern Wisconsin area I’ve found myself really following the Twins. Maybe it’s one of those things where you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

I’m guessing it’ll be like that for friends of Kirby Puckett. He certainly had some problems, especially after he retired. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to wake up blind one day, and have to give up the job you love and are so good at. But it sounds like he was just starting to get things under control again, getting remarried, losing some weight. It’s too bad that the 10 years in between did him in before he got his second chance.

Bye, Kirby. Thanks for all the excellent play.

And to Phil Rogers of the Chicago Tribune: are people who overcome adversity expected to help others still in adverse conditions? It’s hard to help others when you don’t have your own act together. Sometimes it’s best to keep “role models” away from kids. And what’s with “his largesse was almost exclusively limited to Minnesota’s Twins Cities?” Is that jealousy? Maybe Chicago sucks so bad that he didn’t want anything to do with it. At any rate, I do agree that it is a shame that all that potential is now lost forever.