Hail the Fallen Hero

I've never been much of a fan of baseball, so I was surprised when the news of Kirby Puckett's death hit me so hard. Growing up in Minnesota, talk of the Minnesota Twins was part of the background noise of adult conversations that I had grown used to, even if I didn't fully understand. I remember being 6 years old, standing in my pajamas in the living room, waving my "homer hanky" with fervor as my mom and my great aunt shouted at the television screen, cheering hysterically as they won the World Series, though never fully comprehending the importance of all this. Kirby Puckett was always the family-friendly face of the MN Twins -- it was his number on the back of the jersey on my Twins teddy bear, his face on my Twins t-shirt -- and so "Kirby" was synonymous with MN Twins fan-dom. More than an emblem, he was our hero in both his skill and his avowed fidelity to our home-town team. His rise from the slums of Chicago to the championship of the great American past-time makes his subsequent fall from grace all the more tragic in our minds.
Despite the PR, Puckett had a long history of abusive relationships with women, a fact that the male-dominated baseball establishment preferred to overlook amid accusations of sexual harassment within the league. According to an article in Sports Illustrated, Puckett not only cheated on his wife, but he also cheated on his longterm mistress who claims that his cheritable disposition was a front for his often obscene dark side. In 2003, his wife finally left him, claiming that he had not only beaten and verbally abused her, but that he went so far as to put a gun to her head while she was holding their child. Suddenly striken with glaucoma in 1996, Puckett was forced to retire from baseball, and his estrangement from the game and his true passion in life seemed only to worsen this dark side. With the onset of blindness, Puckett lost sight of his dream entirely. He abandoned the Twin Cities for warmer climes in Arizona, put on an unhealthy amount of weight, and then succumbed to a stroke at the tragically young age of 45.
It is a testament to the optimism of the American people that we continue to give rise to heros only to watch them fall from grace. Since Watergate, we have long accepted that our national leaders are subject to the same moral incontinence as the average human being. We watch our religious leaders pleading for alms on television, and we half expect the likes of an Oral Roberts to pocket his preacher's share. We understand the pressures on athletes, even as we poo-poo their doping practices. Superman long ago broke his back, yet we've resurrected him as a champion of stem-cell research, and we find new actors to fill the role (Superman Returns comes out sometime this year). But somehow, it still seems as though we are the victims when our heros take a tumble. How could Kirby Puckett betray us by cheating on his wife, pissing in public, and turning his back on the team? Yet, might we also ask if we set the bar impossibly high when our "heros" don't live up to our standards?
There is no doubt that Kirby Puckett was a great man who transformed baseball, and for a short time at least, united Minnesotans around a champion and a winning team. He was the man we wanted for our hero, but sadly, it seems as though he was never really up for the task. I doubt that he was unworthy of the designation, but his collapse under the weight of all our hopes and dreams makes it clear to me at least that it was not something he was prepared to bear.