| | Kirby Puckett, as anyone who reads the sports pages knows, died yesterday.
Hopefully, today's athletes will read the headlines, see the photo slideshows and video montages and remember back to watching him play. And maybe they'll remember how much fun it is and how lucky they are.
Puckett was one of my favorite athletes. He played with an outright enthusiasm and love for the game. He was happy to be there, and anyone who saw him knew it. He wasn't the most in-shape, but damned if he'd let that stop him. He zipped around the outfield with the speed and countenance of a pinball. He never ran the bases — he scooted around them. And just because he was having fun didn't mean he wasn't competitive — is asking a team to climb on your back not one of the ballsiest statements ever uttered in sports?
It just seems like there are so few athletes like that now, that still play the game like a little kid. I
look at what happened after, and I'm not surprised — and to my chagrin, so many columnisits dredge it up, saying he ruined his legacy. I think it's irresponsible not to mention it, but it's equally irresponsible to take it out of context. If you saw Puckett play, you knew he loved the game. LOVED it. And that was torn from him, by no fault of his own. He'd worked insanely hard to get there, cherished it while he was there and then in the fading of an eye, it was gone. That's a void so painful, I can't even imagine it. Does it necessarily excuse what actions he did do? No. Does it make them gain a little more sense? Sure. It's easy to judge when you sit at a desk commenting on the actions of others. But say, soon after one of these guys won a Pulitzer, they lost use of their hands. How would they deal? Or if you lost what you loved —what you'd based your very life around? It wouldn't be easy.
Puckett played in an era when I unconditionally adored baseball, no questions asked. I knew the name and position of every player — how could I not, when I had stacks of boxed and binders chocked with baseball cards, religiously following the minute fluctuations in their averages? I knew I'd never play, but there was something honest and pure and fun about the game. I think that's gone from it now. And, sadly, one of the men who embodied that, who was baseball, who was sandlots and Neat's Foot Oil, who was the dream of every kid who spent endless hours winging a ball at the side of a house; now, he's gone too. |
| | Posted 3/7/2006 11:03 AM - 6 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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