Where Are They Now? Former Twins Star Kirby Puckett - baseball player - Interview

Baseball Digest, Nov, 2000 by John Henderson

Despite losing sight in his right eye, ex-batting champ continues to play a role in the game as Minnesota's executive vice president

IT'S DISTRACTING AT FIRST. YOU CAN'T really take your eye off the eye. It's partially closed with kind of a clear, pink tint to it, like David Carradine's character in the old "Kung Fu" series.

Everything else about Kirby Puckett looks the same. It's as though he went from that historic game-winning homer in the 1991 World Series straight down the hallway toward his Minnesota Twins office on Kirby Puckett Place. His shoulders are as broad as one of Minnesota's lakes.

Surprisingly, so is his smile.

He bounds down the hallway and a co-worker tells him he did a good job with his color commentary on radio the night before.

"I'm still trying to figure out what I can do," Puckett calls back with a smile. "All I've ever done is play baseball." He sits down in his massive leather chair behind a stained wood desk. It seems odd, almost sad, seeing one of the greatest baseball players of our generation sitting in a vice president's chair, staring at his jersey hanging on a wall. Has it really been four years since he retired? The guy looks like he still could play. He still looks like he works out. He still looks like ... well, Kirby Puckett. Except for one fact.

Kirby Puckett is half blind.

He hasn't talked much publicly about the little-known disease that cost him his career at age 35. For four months in 1996, the media followed his every move. What caused that giant gray spot in his right eye? What kept him from breaking camp with the Twins? What made Triple-A inside fastballs look like dangerous missiles? Puckett didn't mind the questions.

He wanted to know, too.

Now he does.

Driven by a goal even more challenging than resurrecting the dead-end Twins, Puckett is getting word to the world about glaucoma, "the silent assassin." It cost him his career but not his outlook on life. You need the perky personality of Lassie to get through the day knowing you still could be playing the game you love.

After all, all he'd ever done was play baseball.

"What else am I supposed to do?" says the 39-year-old Puckett, his giant shoulders shrugging. "It's like playing poker. You get dealt a hand. You've got a choice to either hold 'em or fold 'em. I'm not a folder. I want to play."

So he'll play in the front office instead of on the field. He'll settle for a .318 career batting average, two World Series championships and 2,304 hits, disappointingly short knowing his pace should have made him the third player last year to get 3,000 hits. No one celebrated Puckett in 1999. Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn were lionized while Puckett tried figuring out how to keep the Twins from becoming the worst team in baseball.

"It's unfortunate the way you look at the situation, but it happened," Puckett says. "I'm kind of a realist. I don't live in a fantasyland. I lived in a fantasyland for 12 years playing professional baseball. That's what it is. They treat you like kings if you play professional baseball. I had fun. But I have to move on with my life." As he moves on, however, something bothers him. It may bother him forever. It's a question that cost him a shot at immortality.

"I took five or six physicals a year," he says. "How could this not be detected?" It should have been a great day when he woke that March 28 morning in Fort Myers, Florida. Puckett had three hits off Greg Maddux the day before to improve his Grapefruit League average to .370, and the Twins were flying to Denver for an exhibition game against the Rockies.

He was coming off 1995, one of his best years. His team was supposed to be awful, but he had his eyes set on 3,000 hits. He figured four more years tops.

Then he rolled over in bed and was stunned at what he saw. Or couldn't see. He couldn't see his wife's face. It was blurry, gray, "thunderstorm gray," he calls it. He managed to drive to the stadium, drop off his gear, return the rental car and get back to the stadium. By that time, the man who was fearless on the field felt scared.

"All of a sudden my peripheral vision was gray," Puckett says. "I had no vision. I couldn't even see your hair. "Man, what happened to my eye?"

Puckett figured he had slept on it wrong. He told Twins trainer Dick Martin, who took him to a doctor. A battery of tests was performed.

"But by that time," Puckett says, "it was too late." Glaucoma strikes as quickly as a 90-mph fastball and is much more deadly. The difference is, when you swing and miss at a fastball, you know you've struck out. With glaucoma, questions linger for months. Puckett flew weekly to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to see Bert Glazier, one of the top glaucoma specialists.

He thinned his blood and did more tests. Meanwhile, Puckett dug for more information. Ever since his parents died of heart attacks, Puckett spent so much time in the doctor's office he could skip the entrance exam if he ever decided on medical school. He had every valve, artery and tissue examined and re-examined. His eyes? Why bother? He had 20/15 vision.