Twins Try to Halt Puckett’s Retreat

For the most fanatic of Metrodome patrons who scrawl messages on banners, on their clothing or even on their bodies trying to coax (and sometimes threaten) the Minnesota Twins into getting Kirby Puckett’s signature on a new contract, there simply are too many agonizing precedents leading them to believe that their latest, greatest baseball hero soon may perform his magic elsewhere.

They watched local boy and World Series MVP Jack Morris leave town last winter, opting for free agency the day after his historic Game 7 pitching performance. Before that, most of them watched the Twins’ World Series championship team of 1987 too quickly disintegrate, with the onset of the game’s big-money contracts more often than not contributing to the departures of players such as Frank Viola, Jeff Reardon, Gary Gaetti and Tom Brunansky.

And before that, many Twins fans watched the franchise’s lone Hall of Fame players -- Harmon Killebrew and Rod Carew -- be permitted to finish their careers with other clubs. To the locals, there’s a disturbing trend at work, and it’s become even more irritating now that the ranks of the former Twins might include Puckett -- perhaps the most cherished of all of baseball’s superstars. So there is a minor rebellion brewing in these parts. Minnesotans seem to be telling the Twins: Everything else was bad enough. But don’t mess with our Kirby.

The man charged with attempting to get Puckett to stay, Twins General Manager Andy MacPhail, says that the uproar is neither unexpected nor necessarily undesirable. “How could you expect anything other than that?” MacPhail said here last weekend. “The one thing we don’t want is apathy

Indeed they are. MacPhail slips the phrase “Kirby is different” into his Puckett-related conversations every few sentences, and it’s a pronouncement that has become painfully obvious to him and other Twins officials during the early stages of this season. This is the summer of superstar free agents-to-be. Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Barry Bonds and Texas Rangers slugger Ruben Sierra both could be on the free agent marketplace in the coming offseason. Yet neither of those imposing, multitalented young players has inspired the ruckus among the fans as have the situations of Puckett and another baseball icon whose contract expires at the conclusion of this season -- Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken.

The Puckett and Ripken predicaments of 1992 have many parallels. Each player is in the final year of a contract that -- at least by baseball’s current, otherwordly standards -- leaves him shamefully underpaid. Puckett’s ’92 salary of just under $3 million doesn’t even place him among the game’s 50 highest-paid players. Ripken’s $2.1 million salary for this season puts him third on the Orioles (behind first baseman Glenn Davis and pitcher Storm Davis) and is less than half of that of baseball’s best-compensated shortstop these days -- Barry Larkin of the Cincinnati Reds, with a $4.3 million salary for this year.

Puckett and Ripken have the same agent, the Baltimore-based Ron Shapiro. Both are 31 years old. Both are among the game’s most revered players, and fans in both cities find their departures unthinkable. Both are professional to a fault and admirably civic-minded. The two are friendly -- Ripken played in Puckett’s charity pool tournament in the offseason -- and each is his organization’s centerpiece. Said Twins shortstop Greg Gagne of Puckett: “He’s like Mr. Twin. You can’t imagine him playing anywhere else.”

Puckett and Ripken each has played his entire career in his current organization. And it’s not unimaginable that either -- or both -- could be in a new uniform in 1993.

There are ways, however, in which the situations are different. The Orioles reportedly will generate about $80 million in revenues this year, while the Twins likely will reach the $40 million mark. When the Twins cry small-market poverty, they’re not exaggerating too much, if at all. That’s why Puckett has made it clear that he’ll accept less than his presumed market value to remain in Minnesota. “This is the team I like playing for,” Puckett said earlier this season. “I like the organization, the community, the fans, everything. I hope things can be worked out with the Twins.”

As MacPhail points out, the eyes of baseball have been affixed to the unfolding Puckett drama -- even more so than the Ripken situation -- because how the financially limited Twins deal with their franchise player could be a precursor of what’s to come in the game’s ever-more-ominous economic climate. “Kirby’s made it known he’d like to stay here,” MacPhail said. “I have the impression that he won’t demand absolute top dollar from us. But you can’t penalize a guy for wanting to stay. You don’t turn it into a vindictive thing where you don’t treat a player fairly.”

Puckett and the Twins actually were close to having a deal at one point this year. MacPhail and Shapiro negotiated through their original end-of-April deadline for suspending talks until the season’s end. They appeared to have agreed to a five-year extension in the $27 million to $28 million range. But Twins owner Carl Pohlad reportedly balked at the proposal, and in late May negotiations were postponed -- to be resumed at the conclusion of the season.

Puckett, the man with the bowling-pin body at which scouts once snickered, may be en route to his first regular-season MVP award. He certainly seems on course for his finest season since 1988, when he hit .356 with 24 home runs and 121 RBI. He’s slated to start in the AL’s outfield in San Diego next Tuesday in his seventh consecutive All-Star Game.

Twins fans have worshipped Puckett’s every step lately. At the height of the contract controversy, they have been giving him a lengthy standing ovation prior to his initial at-bat of every game at the Metrodome.

There have been sign-Puckett rallies downtown. Last weekend at the Metrodome, there were “Re-sign Kirby” mottos written on bedsheets, T-shirts-and even the faces of some young fans. Puckett says that he’s been taken off guard.

“The fans here have always been great to me,” he said. “But I never could have imagined anything like this.”

As Andy MacPhail says, Kirby Puckett is different.