by JIM SOUHAN
Minneapolis Star Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/sports/twins/
May 18, 2011
Think of the phrases we use to praise modern-day athletes. They possess "killer instinct." They "stick the dagger" into the opponent. They display "swagger" and "athletic arrogance."
When Harmon Killebrew passed away in Arizona on Tuesday, the sporting world may have lost its foremost gentleman. The greatest Twin did not require false machismo to become one of the greatest home-run hitters in baseball history. Harmon Killebrew did require pressure to exhibit grace.
Will we ever encounter his kind again?
Killebrew's era predated steroid scandals and sporting paparazzi. When he played, players often lived in middle-class neighborhoods. Even if a current player possessed Killebrew's Everyman attitude, he would be distanced from much of society by the invisible fencing of wealth and fame.
Naivete and nostalgia are often weaknesses. In remembrance of Killebrew, allow those of us who grew up watching him and his peers a moment of sepia-toned remembrance.
I spent part of my youth living near Baltimore. One of my strongest memories is of a midseason game the Twins played against the Orioles.
Baltimore third baseman Brooks Robinson was my boyhood idol, in part because of his fielding brilliance, in part because he looked so average. Brooksie, with his skinny arms and hangdog face, could have been your middle-age neighbor, had your middle-age neighbor been granted superhuman hand-eye coordination by a higher power.
A line drive would head down the third-base line, and Robinson's hands would move faster than a Times Square con artist's, and suddenly the ball would be bouncing into Boog Powell's outstretched glove for another improbable out, and you got the feeling that as soon as the game ended, Robinson would resume mowing his lawn and shopping for a toupee.
One night, Robinson and the Orioles faced the Twins at old Memorial Stadium. When Robinson left the field with his team, he was replaced at third by a player who looked less likely to become a Hall of Fame ballplayer -- a short, thick, balding player, who looked like a neighborhood butcher playing for the local slow-pitch softball team.
Then Killebrew plodded to the plate, launched a home run deep into the left-field bleachers, dropped his bat, watched the ball fly and started his slow navigation around the bases.
"Oh, he would watch the ball," Tony Oliva said. "He would hit it so far, so high, and he would stand there and watch it.
"Pitchers would throw at him, hit him, for doing that, but I never saw him react. He would just take first base like nothing happened."
I did not grow up in Minnesota following Killebrew, but I know what it is like to have given my young heart to a great ballplayer when baseball was king, when we erected pedestals for our favorite ballplayers and left them there for eternity.
While it may seem inelegant to compare deaths, I believe that it hurts us more when we lose a great baseball player than when we lose other athletes.
Great baseball players, especially in Killebrew's prime, were not occasional visitors to our homes. They were uncles, cousins, friends.
They were there every day in the morning paper. They were on television more often than any other athletes. They were the people you followed late at night, with a transistor radio tucked under your pillow, turned down just far enough that your parents could pretend you were sleeping.
Someday, another player may replace Killebrew as the greatest Twin of all time. It is unlikely that another player will ever become so universally beloved and admired.
We called him "the Killer," but that nickname matched the man only when a fastball was headed toward home plate. In life, he was the most gracious of the all-time greats, the most likely to leave someone he just met feeling privileged to shake his hand.
Jeff Idelson, the president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, once told me that the two Hall of Famers who most enthusiastically embraced their roles as icons, and most enthusiastically embraced the public, were Robinson ... and Killebrew.
I was lucky enough to see them play the same position in the same game. I was lucky enough to meet both, to confirm Idelson's assessment of the men.
In life, Killebrew did us a great favor. He allowed us to believe that the ballplayers we idolized in our youth were worthy of our affection. He never let us down.
Jim Souhan can be heard Sundays from 10 a.m. to noon and weekdays at 2:40 p.m. on 1500ESPN. His Twitter name is Souhanstrib. • jsouhan@startribune.com
Slugger put Minnesota on baseball map in 1965
by PATRICK REUSSE
Star Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/sports/twins/
May 18, 2011
Calvin Griffith gained permission from the American League to move his Washington Senators to the Bloomington prairie in October 1960. We had a great old time at Met Stadium in those earliest summers, with slugger Harmon Killebrew as the hero among heroes.
The Killer would hit more than 40 home runs in his first four Minnesota seasons, and lead the league with 48, 45 and 49 in 1962-64. He hit those 45 in 1963 despite missing the first 20 games after knee surgery.
And yet it was 1965, a season in which Harmon would miss several weeks after the All-Star break because of a dislocated elbow, when our pride in the Killer and in our major league status reached its zenith.
There would be a World Series, but before that there would be an All-Star Game in Minnesota. The date was July 13, which meant the corn in the fields visible from the Met's second deck would be knee-high and rustling in the summer breeze.
Talk about a reason to celebrate -- the greatest players in the greatest game were going to gather in our favorite erector set.
We were big league.
Officially.
And to make it more fantastic, the '65 Twins, after hints of strength in earlier seasons, sprung from the gate, moved into first place in the 10-team American League on Memorial Day weekend and started opening a gap.
The dreaded Yankees, AL champions in five consecutive seasons and 14 of the previous 16, were at the Met for a four-game series that preceded the All-Star Game. They arrived trailing the Twins by 12 1/2 games, and still we could not believe the Yankees truly were dead.
Not until Sunday -- when Killebrew hit a two-run home run on a 3-2 pitch with two outs in the ninth for a 6-5 victory. Ray Scott's call of that at-bat, and that blast, lives in Twins lore. Harmon's homer gave the Twins three of four in the series, a five-game lead over Cleveland and Baltimore and a 14 1/2-game separation from the Yankees.
The Killer's homer had us ready to burst with excitement, and then two days later, the All-Stars were here, and the burst was with pride.
The National League brought the greatest assembly of talent on one team in baseball history. There were 11 future Hall of Famers, and that doesn't count Pete Rose, the all-time hit king.
Juan Marichal, Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale took care of 19 of the required 27 outs for the National League. Roberto Clemente, Frank Robinson and Billy Williams were the NL's backup outfielders to Willie Mays, Henry Aaron and Willie Stargell.
The NL ripped starter Milt Pappas and then one of our six Twins, Mudcat Grant, for five runs in the first two innings. The 46,706 ticket holders (including me) feared humiliation for our overmatched league on this humid afternoon.
It didn't count in the standings, but Minnesota needed Harmon -- to save face -- as much that afternoon as at any time.
The lead was 5-1 entering the last of the fifth and Cincinnati's Jim Maloney was on to join the future Hall of Famers in throwing bullets. But Detroit's Dick McAuliffe hit a two-run homer, and then Harmon came up with Brooks Robinson on base, and hit a two-runner to make it 5-5.
The Killer circled the bases inside one of the great dins ever heard at a ballgame in Bloomington.
The NLers eventually won 6-5, but Harmon had made the day for us, and he would later say: "That was really a big thrill, hitting it before the hometown fans."
Such a thrill, in fact, that when sculptor Bill Mack contacted Killebrew about the bronze statue that would sit on Target Field's plaza, and asked for a photo, Harmon said he had just the one.
And he sent along the newspaper photo of him getting full extension on the swing that sent the Maloney pitch into the Met's bleachers and tied the 1965 All-Star Game at 5-5. It was that swing, that big, uppercut finish, that Harmon -- early in his 70s -- tried to duplicate during studio sessions with Mack.
Harmon has gone, hopefully to a Field of Dreams, but if you're too young to remember that All-Star home run, don't fret it. You can see the Killer take that swing 365 days a year, in downtown Minneapolis, in bronze.
Patrick Reusse can be heard noon-4 weekdays on 1500ESPN. • preusse@startribune.com
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