by Matt Barr

Kirby Puckett

When you're acquitted of sexual assault because the jury couldn't conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the woman didn't go into the men's room stall with you willingly, and your wife tells of how you've put a cocked gun to her head while she was holding your two year old daughter, among other just as disgusting things, and, oh, you're a millionaire pro athelete, formerly beneficiary of pro baseball's then-richest-ever contract, in fact, you will have had to have been an extraordinarily special ballplayer for people to be very sad that you've passed away. Kirby Puckett was, and the effusive mourning today undergirded with the haughty "he doesn't deserve it" is interesting to see.

No team I follow in any sport has ever won a championship in my entire life, not that I'm keeping track or anything, but winning with Puckett had to be like winning (mostly) with Jim Kelly. Winning is great, but when the player you're riding there is having such a ball it's even more fun. Look at the Yankees in the late 90s. Was anybody having fun? Or the Patriots. That smug, smack-me grin of Brady's aside, was anyone on those teams just having a good time winning? It's aggravating enough to watch millionaires mope around while playing a kids' game, but when they mope around while winning World Series and Super Bowls, they should be charged with fraud.

Puckett was no fraud, between the lines. Crank struck the right note today, I think:

The Puckett we saw, we loved, and we had good reasons for that love. Maybe that's not all we should remember, but it's a part we should not forget.

Amen, brother, Bat-Girl has today's best obit.

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