One of my favorite players when I first started to follow baseball. Kind of reminded me of a lumberjack. along with Frank “Hondo” Howard of the Washington Senators.
He is only one of few players who hit 40 or more homeruns in 8 seasons. Only Babe Ruth has done better.
RIP Harmon Killebrew
Yeah, he let us know this was coming last week, but it’s still sad. He was before my time, but I recall driving by Met Stadium when I was young and asking about why the street south of the stadium was named “Killebrew Drive”. This led to a lesson in Twins’ fandom.
It’s really been a depressing week to be a Minnesota sports fan, what with this and Boogaard’s death last weekend.
I remember defending HR champ Killebrew was on deck with the lead runs on base in the top of the 9th of the first major league game I ever attended. Leo Cardenas grounded out and the Indians’ slim lead was preserved. Going to the game was a First Communion present I happily received.
RIP Mr. Killebrew.
Killebrew was really the signature player of the franchise. I know there have been other greats like Puckett but Killebrew really defined the Twins. When he came to bat it was drama. Pitchers hated to face him.
We could start a thread on other players that were the signature of their franchise and maybe we should.
Nonetheless, Killebrew was the real deal and baseball has lost a true star.
R.I.P. Harmon. You were magnificent!
As a youngster I caught just the tail end of his career and he was always this old player in my minds eye. Fifteen or so years later and now in college, it was really neat to catch an episode of Home Run Derby feature Killebrew and Mickey Mantle looking to be in their prime.
Ah, the days when baseball players had real men’s names like Harmon Killebrew, Al Kaline, Rocky Colavito, Mickey Mantle, Jungle Jim Rivera, etc.
BTW, yesterday I heard that the image in the MLB logo is patterened after Harmon Killebrew. Anyone verify?
This [site](http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?
page=lukas/081105&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab7pos2) says no.
As I’ve posted many times before, even though I was born and raised in New York, I was a Twins fan as a kid before I became a Yankees fan, mainly because the first player who ever gave me an autograph was Earl Battey, the Twins’ catcher.
(Coincidentally, after he retired, Earl got a PR job at Con Edison and I used to see him at Yankee games all the time.)
Tony Oliva and Harmon Killebrew were the first players I idolized. And it appears in retrospect that I could have done a lot worse! I’m STILL ticked off that Harmon had to wait several years to get into the Hall of Fame.
Killebrew announced that he was giving up treatment and going to a hospice, but I didn’t know death would come so soon. Very sad.