You never know when you’re going to have an unsettling Minnesota Twins moment.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently opened a 32-year-old pack of Topps baseball cards with a friend and immediately found a Kirby Puckett card, only then to discover that there were two cards stuck together.
As I peeled them apart, I found myself sitting in stunned silence, staring at both cards. Of all the cards that could’ve been adhered to Puckett’s card, did it have to be El Presidente, otherwise known as pitcher Dennis Martinez?
On this card, he is strangely identified as “Denny Martinez.”
I must admit that I have long blamed Martinez for ending Puckett’s baseball career.
On Sept. 28, 1995, in what would be the final career at bat for the Twins’ most popular player of all time, Martinez, pitching for the Cleveland Indians at the Metrodome, hit two batters in the first inning of the game. He hit Chuck Knoblauch to start the game, then drilled Puckett on the right side of his face, breaking the jaw of the future Hall of Famer. Puckett collapsed at home plate.
“I’ve never seen so much blood on a baseball field,” Knoblauch said to the Star Tribune after the game. “I got a little weak in the knees.”
Puckett would recover from the injury in time for spring training the following season, and then hit a sizzling .344.
“He even got a hit against Greg Maddux, the Star Tribune reported, “the game’s best pitcher, and from second base yelled at Maddux: ‘Hey, Picasso — how you doing?'”
And then it all came to an end the next day, March 28, 1996, when Puckett woke up and discovered a black dot in his right eye, his dominant eye, the newspaper reported.
On March 30, he was placed on the injured list for the first time in his career. Later, that “dot” would become an early form of glaucoma, then surgeons would ultimately determine that Puckett had irreversible damage to the retina in that eye, the newspaper reported.
By about mid-July of 1996, it was all over.
“Baseball’s been a great part of my life,” Puckett said at the press conference announcing his retirement. “But now it’s time for me to close this chapter of this book in baseball and go on with Part 2 of my life. Kirby Puckett’s going to be all right. Don’t worry about me. I’ll show up and I’ll have a smile on my face.”
Perhaps it’s not fair to blame Martinez because he was just as concerned as the next Puckett fan, the Star Tribune reported.
“I lost one of my best friends in baseball for this game,” said Martinez after he hit Puckett. “I feel so bad right now. I felt so bad, I almost took myself out of the game. It was the worst feeling in my life, when I saw him go down.”
Puckett didn’t blame him either, according to the newspaper.
“I’ve had about 200 calls from friends and teammates, so I’ve been on the phone a lot,” he said. “Dennis Martinez called and said he was sorry. He said he had a hard time pitching after that. I know he didn’t mean to hit me, his ball just moves so much. Dennis is a good friend of mine and I know it wasn’t intentional.”
Don’t think the Twins didn’t respond after Knoblauch and Puckett got hit by pitches on that late September day. The very next inning, Twins pitcher Frankie Rodriguez made sure his first pitch hit Indians slugger Albert Belle in the shoulder.
“When asked if he was worried about hitting the 6-2, 220-pound Belle, Rodriguez said: ‘I come from Brooklyn,'” the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported.
Extra innings…
–It turns out the Twins are going to spend a little free-agent money after they agreed to a one-year, $7 million deal to get first baseman/DH Josh Bell, most recently of the Washington Nationals.
“He popped 22 round-trippers this past season and has averaged 26 homers per 162 games over the past seven seasons — despite his proclivity for hitting the ball into the ground,” MLB Trade Rumors reports.
–We also now know the names of the limited partners who have purchased a share of the Twins. They are Glick Family Investments, George G. Hicks and Craig Leipold, who owns the NHL’s Minnesota Wild. Although a share of the club has been sold, the Pohlad family, who have owned the Twins since 1984, maintain control of the team.
Source: Newspapers.com