Puck

A friend of mine, earlier in the day Monday, told me an out-of-nowhere bit about someone they knew — and we both didn't have much affinity for — had died of a brain aneurysm. The connection we had to this person was thin, to say the least, but her mentioning it still stuck an empty feeling in me, despite the fact he was not overly liked by either of us (for reasons not needing to be mentioned).

We walked silently for a bit after she dropped that morsel of info on me until I said "it's an ugly feeling to hear about anybody dying," and this was with full recognition that this guy wasn't anywhere near our good graces.

It's a hollow feeling, no matter your connection — or lack thereof — to the person in question.

So I'm sitting here being an insomniac but, because of a day off, separated from the sports world as I sometimes try to avoid headlines when I'm not in the office.

I turn on CNN and the ticker is rolling with those quotes. You know the ones, when someone dies, that you read or hear and just know they're talking about someone in the past tense.

I'm reading Carleton Fisk and Carl Pohlad's quotes and I know that Kirby Puckett is dead.

I flick to ESPN.com and he's there smiling — as I think his lasting image always was going to be — with that depressing stamp that goes on visual obituaries, the birth-to-death year.

If I'm to be honest, I was never a Minnesota Twins fan, and I can't even say I ever felt overly fanatical about Kirby Puckett either. If someone asked me if I liked him, then the natural answer would be yes and "how could you not?"

Laying out page B3 of the Brandon Sun for Monday's pages on Sunday night, I needed a story to fill a spot and realized I had Puckett's stroke/surgery story yet to be placed. At the time, it was a minor story — a guy who was surely going to make it through — and I played it low on the page, grabbed a photo off the wire of him smiling with his Hall of Fame plaque. In hindsight, I'm glad that I did.

Monday I went into the office and read the story on the wire that Puckett was in critical condition. Later, quite surprised, I found out he was dead.

Puckett was part of an era of sports when I was a kid, when I was playing every sport I could, every day that I could and followed every stat line and every highlight. My friend Paul was a big Twinkies fan and, even though I wasn't a fan myself, Puckett's career was still parelled by my fandom in sports. As I soaked in every baseball highlight — and understand I'm not even a huge stickball fan — his playing days were playing out in front of me.

Point being? Fanatical or indifferent, fact remains that I grew up watching Kirby Puckett and I have an appreciation for what that means.

Puckett was not, by any means, a flawless hero as sometimes his sports image was made out to be. He certainly had very public flaws at times.

Still, Puckett is remembered — as anyone in death will be — for the positives. And because of those, his premature death makes those instinctive feelings around death that much uglier.