Kirby Puckett, 45; Beloved Outfielder for the Minnesota Twins, Baseball Hall of Famer

Kirby Puckett, a Hall of Fame outfielder who won two World Series in a 12-year baseball career with the Minnesota Twins, died Monday, a day after suffering a stroke at his Arizona home. He was 45.

Puckett was pronounced dead at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Scottsdale, Ariz., after undergoing surgery Sunday at a nearby hospital.

Known for his squat frame, genial personality and boundless determination, Puckett was a beloved figure in Minnesota. But at 35 he was forced to retire because of glaucoma in his right eye.

En route to his Hall of Fame induction in 2001, he was a 10-time All-Star, six-time Gold Glove Award winner, a career .318 hitter and led the Twins to World Series titles in 1987 and 1991. His 11th-inning home run in Game 6 of the 1991 World Series staved off elimination for the Twins, who then won Game 7 against the Atlanta Braves.

“This is like Mickey Mantle dying in New York for Minnesota,” said Roy Smith, a pitcher for the Twins from 1986 to 1990. “There are people in Minnesota who never were within 10 miles of that guy who are crying right now.”

As a player, Puckett earned a reputation as an ardent family man whose charitable endeavors, particularly in helping children, earned him many national honors, including baseball’s Roberto Clemente Man of the Year Award in 1996. After he retired, however, he was divorced amid accusations of spousal abuse and adultery, and was cleared of an assault charge in 2003, having been accused of groping a woman in a Minneapolis-area restaurant.

In recent years, the previously personable Puckett was rarely seen in public. Always pudgy -- he played at 5 feet 8 and about 210 pounds -- Puckett was said to have gained as much as 100 pounds, and friends began to fret about his health. He left his front-office job with the Twins in 2002 and turned down offers to serve as a guest coach with the organization.

“This guy was the Twins,” Smith said. “You were proud to have played with Kirby Puckett. There was no question the game was going to be played right, because Kirby was standing on second base on every pop-up to shortstop.

“My memory of the Twins is Kent Hrbek doing something funny and Kirby Puckett laughing. [For] anybody that was ever associated with the Twins or put on that uniform for one day, this has got to be the saddest of days.”

Puckett was born into a poor neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, where he learned to play and love baseball despite substandard fields and equipment. Unsigned out of high school, he worked installing floor carpeting at a nearby automobile plant until a local college coach recruited him out of a tryout camp.

Selected by the Twins in the first round of the 1982 draft, Puckett made his major league debut on May 8, 1984. He had four hits that day, on his way to becoming one of the best players of his generation. When he awoke one morning 12 years later with limited vision in his right eye, never to play again, Puckett had finished with 2,304 hits, 207 home runs and 1,085 runs batted in. He led the American League in hits four times and once was its batting champion.

“On behalf of Major League Baseball, I am terribly saddened by the sudden passing of Kirby Puckett,” Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said in a statement. “Kirby was one of the great players of the 1980s and 1990s. I admired Kirby throughout his career. He was a Hall of Famer in every sense of the term. He played his entire career with the Twins and was an icon in Minnesota. But he was revered throughout the country, and will be remembered wherever the game is played. Kirby was taken from us much too soon -- and too quickly. My deepest sympathies and condolences go out to his family and friends.”

Puckett will be honored with a moment of silence before today’s World Baseball Classic game in Phoenix between the United States and Mexico.

Puckett, who was engaged to be married this summer, is survived by a daughter, Catherine; and a son, Kirby Jr. Plans for a memorial service were incomplete Monday.