Kirby Puckett

Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett died last night at the age of 45. He was the victim of a stroke, and is the second youngest member of the HOF to die (Lou Gehrig was the youngest). Puckett is the classic example how the media likes only one thing more than building someone into a larger than life hero, and that's tearing that person down.

If you read anything written about Puckett before 2003, you'd think you were reading about baseball's answer to Mother Teresa. Here's a 1987 puff piece from Sports Illustrated that's pretty indicative of how the media thought of him for his entire career as a player. Then there's this 1996 weeper from The Sporting News on the occasion of Puckett's untimely retirement from the game.

Puckett's good media vibe came to a screeching halt in 2003. That's when he was accused of sexual assault, and made the cover of Sports Illustrated as the subject of a scathing expose by Frank Deford. Deford's article laid bare Puckett's alleged marital infidelities, penchant for violence, and general nastiness, and concluded that he'd played all of us for fools.

The story did a lot of damage to Puckett. Although he was acquitted of the sexual assault charges, Puckett never returned to the limelight, and even moved away from Minnesota, where he was once a king.

Of course, any experienced PR guy will tell you that dying is an excellent career move for a celebrity, and that's sure turning out to be the case with Kirby Puckett. He's a pariah no longer, and while his past indiscretions get a mention on the jump page, they don't make page 1 of this morning's sports pages.

The prize for the most cynical obituary goes to Sports Illustrated. Not wanting to remind readers of its role in destroying Puckett's reputation at this particular moment in time, the magazine that did him in writes a generally fawning obit, and tucks in a single sentence referring to the accusations that landed him on its cover three years ago--without mentioning one word about its own cover story.

Maybe the most thoughtful and balanced thing ever written about Kirby Puckett and the media came from the late Ralph Wiley. It's available here, and is worth reading much more than any of the hollow, mass produced obituaries that are popping up everywhere this morning.