FanHouse Kirby Puckett

Saturday Spotlight is a weekly lightning-round of questions delving into the personalities and stories of Major Leaguers.

Omar Vizquel is best known for his outstanding work at shortstop, but you may also know that he's a musician, an artist and a pretty fancy dresser. On his way to the Hall of Fame, he's now finishing out his career in Texas, tutoring young phenom Elvis Andrus.

On to the questions ...

As I mentioned in a post here at FanHouse last week, Carlos Gomez is quickly becoming one of my favorite players in all of baseball to watch. Even when he's tearing my favorite team up, as he did last night against the White Sox, I still enjoy just watching him play baseball.

On Wednesday night, Carlos became the first Minnesota Twin to hit for the cycle since Kirby Puckett did it in 1986, which is fitting since Carlos may be the most exciting Twin since Kirby. Not to mention, he's also incredibly considerate.

After leading off the game with a home run off of Mark Buehrle, Gomez's home run trot around the bases was faster than half the players in the league can sprint full speed. Why'd he do it? Well, after a nearly two-hour rain delay before the game started he didn't want to waste any more time. "The game today started too late. I say, 'Let me run the bases quick so the game goes fast.' "

Gomez completed his cycle in reverse order, following that first inning homer by tripling in the fifth, doubling in the sixth, and finishing it all off with an infield-single in the ninth. He also managed to score two runs and drive in three others.

He's doing all of this, and his coaches will tell you that at 22-years old, he's still learning the game. Imagine what he's going to be capable of once he actually knows what he's doing.

Since I am officially responsible for covering two divisions and nine teams here at FanHouse, I have to spend a lot of my time watching baseball. It's a hard life, I assure you, but these are the sacrifices I'm willing to make for you, the reader.

One of the players I've been particularly interested in following this season is Twins centerfielder Carlos Gomez. I went over these reasons in the spring during our Under the Gun feature, where I profiled Gomez as the one member of the Twins who's under a lot of pressure this season. One, because he came over from the Mets in the Johan Santana trade, and two, because he's also faced with the task of replacing the team's most popular player since Kirby Puckett in Torii Hunter.

So far, I'm having a blast watching Gomez play. He's not exactly tearing it up at the plate in his first month, as he finished April hitting only .265/.275/.373, and he's struck out 25 times in only 102 at bats. Still, he's been a joy to watch while on the base paths and in the field. Well, that is unless you're his manager Ron Gardenhire. Then some of the things he does probably drive you crazy.

"It's kind of crazy, really. It's high school," Gardenhire said of Gomez's antics. "I don't even know if it's college (level). But he's so enthusiastic and such a talent ... "

By now, the Bugs and Cranks post taking Bill James to task on his paragraph in 2008's Gold Mine -- which loosely mentions Kirby Puckett and Gary Gaetti in the same breath as steroids -- is old news. Our boy Josh Alper has given his take too. We get it: It's not cool to bust on Puckett and the Twins for things we do not know.

Still, the outrage is not universal. The Hardball Times' Dave Studeman called the Bugs and Cranks headline irresponsible, and Rob Neyer pointed out the irony in a place named Bugs and Cranks taking issue with a slight bit of snark lodged in a deep analytical essay.

There is another bit of irony here, and it's that, all of a sudden, it seems taboo to speculate about players' steroid use. I don't see James' graph as any worse than rhetoric about Tony La Russa facilitating a steroids culture in his locker rooms, or jokingly guessing with your friends which players were on the juice. Since when is this such a big deal? Why all the outrage? Last time I checked, it was the mainstream baseball media's job to be indignant on command. Us blogs -- we're supposed to have a sense of humor. Getting all frothy about a one-off is a pretty incongruous thing for a blog to do.

The worst part of the Steroid Era in baseball is that we'll never be quite sure who was or wasn't on drugs during the years when testing was nonexistent. We all have our suspicions about players whose production and/or muscles exploded but they usually remain just that. Bill James, however, went a step further in his new book The Bill James Gold Mine 2008.

Cameron Martin of the fine baseball blog Bugs & Cranks was reading the section of the book devoted to Atypical Seasons which highlighted years that saw players over or underachieve in notable amounts. James found that two of the greatest home run under-producers played for the 1984 Minnesota Twins. Gary Gaetti only went yard five times that year while Kirby Puckett didn't hit a round-tripper all year, which led James to this conclusion.

"Suggesting the possibility that the Twins' two World Championships may have been aided by their team being among the first to discover...well, I'd better not go there. Nor will I point out that Gaetti was bald and had acne and Puckett died young."

Yes, James suggests, with no supporting evidence (and his physique as evidence to the contrary), that Puckett died at 45 because he used steroids. Is it unusual that he then hit 31 home runs in 1986 and went on to average 19 per 162 games over the rest of his career? Absolutely. Is the only possible answer that he was abusing performance enhancers? Not by a longshot and saying otherwise does a disservice to both him and James's reputation as an objective analyst of baseball. Only one of them's undeserved.

Yesterday we told you about Johan Santana's reaction to the Twins trade deadline moves. The gist of which was "These guys are cheap and I'm out of here after next season." Well, just in case there were still some Twins fans out there with any hope Johan might stay, former Twin David Ortiz wants you to know that he won't be. When he was asked if Santana would leave, Papi had this to say.

"Oh, he will," Ortiz said of Santana, whose contract with the Twins expires after the 2008 season. "First of all, they're not going to pay him what he costs. You know that. Everybody knows that.

"And second of all, you know what he said."

Ortiz also went on to say that he'd be delighted if Johan came to Boston to be reunited with his "old homeboy."

Of course, as if Johan basically admitting he was leaving wasn't bad enough for Twins fans, Torii Hunter also felt like kicking them while they were down.

Hunter was asked if he'd be willing to give the Twins a hometown discount, and Hunter responded that there's no such thing.

There's no such thing as a discount because I go out and play every day. I don't give them a half job. I don't give you a half job, so why should I give you a discount? I go out there and give them 100 percent. I run into walls.

I dive for balls. I run hard around the bases. I play every day, hurt, no matter what. And I've got to give you a discount? That's stupid. Name all that stuff I did and say I've got to give you a discount? Why do I have to give you a discount when I give you 100 percent?

What a wonderful time to be a Twins fan. At this rate, Kirby Puckett will rise from the grave tomorrow just to make a public statement that he never liked Minnesota "all that much."

Previously at FanHouse:
Johan Santana Is Not Happy
Twins Players Are Not Happy Castillo Is Gone

As aptly described at Fark Sports, the Dodgers April 15th game against the Padres will be just like that old Bugs Bunny episode.

Playing first base for the Dodgers, # 42. Playing second base for the Dodgers, # 42. Pitching for the Dodgers, # 42.

Because as announced on the Dodgers official site, the team will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball in a unique way.

the Dodgers decided to have their entire team wear uniform No. 42 on Jackie Robinson Day in tribute to the late Hall of Famer who broke baseball's color barrier while wearing Dodger Blue.

Check out Sons of Steve Garvey who obtained a sneak peak at the Dodgers scoreboard for that night. Additionally, Juan Pierre and Marlon Anderson will conduct a youth clinic at the MLB Urban Youth Academy in South Central Los Angeles the previous day. While there's no possible way for baseball to thank and honor Jackie Robinson enough for what he went through and endured in paving the way for many future black players, the Dodgers are certainly making their attempts.

Furthermore, Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr. will also wear jersey No. 42 in honor of Robinson on April 15th. Griffey Jr. petitioned the league to wear the number, since it was retired throughout baseball in 1997 on the 50th anniversary. Padres OF Mike Cameron will also wear No. 42 in honor of Robinson when they play the Dodgers on the 15th, and he will even go completely old school.

Today is the one-year anniversary of Kirby Puckett's death.

I was never a Twins fan growing up, but it seemed that my life was intertwined with the Hall of Famer's in a lot of places. Without Kirby Puckett, I probably wouldn't have loved baseball as much as I do today.

In Little League I played for the Twins, and earned the nickname of Kirby. We also went to the same JC, Triton College, in River Grove Illinois.

Most importantly, I still remember sitting in my bedroom on late October nights in 1991 watching the World Series. I was supposed to be in bed at the time, but I had the television real low so my mother wouldn't hear it. I still remember Puckett's game winning home run in Game 6 that sent the series to a 7th game, the one in which the Twins would beat Atlanta and win the Series.

That World Series was one of the most exciting ones I've ever seen, and it solidified baseball as something I loved.

There was just something about the man that made you feel good. If you didn't know him personally, you wanted to. If you did know him, well, Dave Winfield said it best.

"If you didn't like Kirby Puckett, you didn't like life."