Mini Masher : Suddenly, Puckett Finds That He Can Really Sock It

It was springtime for hitters. It was April, and the baseball season was but a few weeks old. You could hardly say spring was in the air, because the Angels were about to meet the Minnesota Twins at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, where the only thing in the air was air-conditioning.

A television station coaxed together men from both sides to introduce the afternoon’s lineups. Reggie Jackson of the Angels, a 40-year-old outfielder who began the season with 530 lifetime home runs, stood with Kirby Puckett of the Twins, a 25-year-old outfielder who began the season with four home runs.

Jackson leaned back and gave the once-over to Puckett’s barrel of a body.

“Well, you look like a man who could hit some home runs,” he said.

“Oh, no, Mr. Jackson,” said Puckett, respectfully. “I’m a singles hitter.”

A couple of weeks after the Angels took off, the Baltimore Orioles flew in to play the Twins. Puckett was in the batting cage before the series opener, whacking the ball repeatedly to the warning track and beyond. Watching intently was Eddie Murray of the Orioles, a 30-year-old slugger who began the season with 258 home runs.

“This guy is going to hit more home runs than me!” Murray exclaimed, tongue definitely in cheek, as Puckett pumped another one over the fence.

Puckett was told about this.

“You can pretty much bet the house that I won’t hit more home runs than Eddie Murray,” he said, laughing.

It is summertime now, and your house is in jeopardy. Puckett has 22 home runs. Murray has half that many. Jackson has 10. Granted, Murray has missed quite a few games due to injury. But what were the odds that as August rolled around, Kirby Puckett, all 5 foot 8 of him, would have more homers than Reggie Jackson and Eddie Murray combined?

He had 1,248 at-bats in the big leagues before this season, and 1,244 of those times he did not hit a home run. He had hit 13 in his entire minor league life. With that body, you could imagine him improving his output to 10 home runs, maybe 12, but not 22, and certainly not by August.

Puckett was a guy whose specialties included leading off, getting on base and stealing bases--35 in two years. He played a fine center field and had a throwing arm as strong as any American League center fielder. He was pretty much everything the Twins wanted him to be.

Except patient. Puckett would not take a walk. He would barely take a pitch. He got off the team bus swinging. Before last season was finished, Puckett made the walk from the dugout to the plate 736 times, including sacrifices, hit-by-pitches, the works. He drew 41 walks.

The Twins spent the winter searching for a leadoff man. Puckett knew it, too. “Until you find one, you’re stuck with me swinging at the first pitch,” he ribbed Manager Ray Miller.

By the beginning of spring training, the Twins not only still had an impatient leadoff man, they had a roly-poly one. Puckett had swelled to 215 pounds. “A fat pig,” he even ridiculed himself. He had turned into Minnesota’s Fats.

“What else can you do in Minnesota during the winter except eat?” Puckett asked.

It was not difficult to ask oneself at that point what sort of season this person might have. The Twins certainly needed his bat. Puckett had hit .296 in 1984, his first full season in the majors, and followed it up with a wonderful year in 1985: .288, 29 doubles, 13 triples, 74 RBIs and 21 stolen bases, not to mention leading major league outfielders in total chances. He was durable, too, missing only one game all season.

Said Miller: “He had 199 hits last year, and no one knew it. He was the best center fielder in the league last year, and no one knew it.”

The only thing Puckett seemed unable to do was hit home runs. This was too bad, too, because the Metrodome was homer heaven, the sort of place where Jack Perconte or Mick Kelleher might have clobbered 10 or 12. What a waste to have an outfielder who couldn’t take pitchers downtown.

Except it wasn’t true. “I knew I could hit home runs in the big leagues, but I thought my job was to get on base,” Puckett said. “I mean, 199 hits--nothing wrong with that.”

Puckett moved back in the box. He also stopped hitting flat-footed, lunging into each pitch. The power was built-in. If he was a runt, he was a strong runt. He had made up his mind to be so during his childhood in Chicago, when, as Puckett recalled: “I was such a little bitty guy, you could barely see me. I knew I would always be short, so I decided to be muscular.”

Balls started leaving the park. Well, not leaving it, since it was the Metrodome, but clearing the fence. Puckett was still ripping at the first pitch--twice in the same weekend at Detroit he homered on the first pitch--and his reputation as a singles hitter was being left behind.

Other young players who had not hit many homers in the minors--Don Mattingly and Wally Joyner come to mind--were able to develop their power the same way. Baltimore Manager Earl Weaver said: “Guys like that are just beginning to learn to hit in the big leagues.” Miller, Weaver’s former pitching coach, concurred, saying: “And they’re so good, they can always revert to the other way if they need hits instead of homers.”

Even so, the extent of Puckett’s power amazed people. At Yankee Stadium, he hit one off the pillar near the Babe Ruth Memorial in faraway left-center on one hop. That one got teammate Tom Brunansky’s attention. “I’ve hit a few home runs, but never one that far,” Brunansky said.

The homers kept coming, but so did the hits. Puckett’s batting average did not fall into the marsh of a Dave Kingman or Ron Kittle. On the contrary, he zoomed to the top of the league leaders. As of Monday, Puckett’s average was .338, third best in the league. He led the majors in total bases, and was second in extra-base hits with 56. Only Mattingly had more hits--one more.

Players with contending teams are generally favored for post-season awards, but a very strong case could be made for Kirby Puckett for American League MVP.

He even made the All-Star team at Reggie Jackson’s expense, passing his Angel idol in the fans’ voting during the final week. Except for Minnesota’s standing near the bottom of the standings, the season has been one long thrill, to be topped off by marriage to a 20-year-old named Tonya Hudson on Nov. 1.

Puckett has taken considerable pleasure in tormenting the first-place Angels. “There is always a guy or two in the majors who is particularly tough on a specific team,” Angel Manager Gene Mauch said. “Lee May used to be that way. We could pitch him overhand, underhand, either hand, and he’d hit a home run. A kid named Greg Gross used to do it to me, too. No matter where we were playing, who we were pitching, he’d hit a line drive some place, automatic.

“That’s pretty much what Kirby Puckett has been doing to us.”

One time earlier this season, when Puckett approached the plate in a clutch situation, Mauch caught the eye of his nephew, Minnesota shortstop Roy Smalley, in the other dugout. “You mean the time I put my hat over my heart?” Mauch asked. “I just wanted him to take it easy on us.”

But Puckett just stands up there, belly over belt, bat looking like a tree limb, tattoo attached to left biceps, and whacks away at anything that looks like a strike.

He has been doing that since his childhood in the Robert Taylor Homes projects in Chicago, where baseball was a game usually played on asphalt. It was there that Puckett got the toughest hit of his life. A teammate didn’t notice Puckett standing nearby, took a practice cut and smashed Kirby in the face with his bat.

“I saw all this blood and wondered what my face looked like,” Puckett said. “I didn’t know if I’d ever have any more girlfriends.”

One of nine children, Puckett made it to Bradley University in Peoria on a baseball scholarship, but he fell behind academically during a three-week leave from school after his father’s death. Puckett enrolled at a junior college, where he caught the eye of the Twins. He needed only 224 games in the minors to convince them he was ready for the Metrodome.

Now, he really is. It is no place to hit singles. Where Puckett’s progress is concerned, Mauch, who once managed in Minnesota, said: “Part of it is just natural ability, and part of it is the ballpark.”

Whatever it is, the Twins have discovered that that they have sort of a mini-Murray in their midst, a Reggie reduced for clearance. Kirby Puckett can hit home runs--and will. You can pretty much bet the park on it.