The Rake Magazine

Year: 2006

  • A man of appetites

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    Puck was a man of huge appetites. I don’t mean the ones that made him prone to stroke, but the ones that made him figuratively larger than life.

    I knew Kirby, not well, but some. I helped report a little about the Twins when I was at City Pages. I played in his pool tournament several years and proudly endured his jibes when I missed an easy shot. There were a bunch of us who had money who paid $500 to play in that tournament. Yeah, we felt good about donating to children’s heart research, but we mostly felt good to be with Kirby, because he always made you feel like a friend.

    He did that with everyone, whether you paid or not. Over on MNSpeak is the remembrance of my son of his first meet with Kirby. He was only 4 years old and we were at one of the last spring training games in Orlando. It was after the game and Kirby and Tony Oliva were spending some extra time giving hitting instruction to a kid who had no chance of making the big league team, but those two guys were still working with him when they could have been at the club house buffet.

    As they were winding up, my wife yelled, “Hey, Kirby, wanna meet your biggest fan?” I thought she meant me, but Kirby walked right over to Matt and talked to him for several minutes. He signed his autograph book, as did Tony, and as he was getting ready to leave, he said, “Matt, wanna have good luck?” Matt nodded. “Here, rub my head,” he said, and leaned over the low fence so the short child could touch his newly shaved head. “I let all the ballplayers do that so we win,” he said, initiating a four-year-old then and there into the secret society of real ballplayers.

    I last ran into Kirby a couple of years ago in a parking lot on First Avenue. He was waiting outside a limo, dressed in a suit, his right eye gone, but the smile still bright. It was after his troubles with Tonya and the woman in the restroom. He was somehow smaller than he had been.

    I went up to him and reintroduced myself and my wife, and he just turned it on. “How you doin’, Tom? You and Kris just have a nice dinner? I did, too. Just waitin’ for my friends now.”

    All I could think to say was, “Kirby, we love you. Hang in there.” We both teared up as we walked on to our car.

    Unfortunately, he couldn’t hang in there. In the end, his demon appetites for all that life offers, both good and bad, got him.

    But when he’s your friend, as he was to anyone who met him, you have to overlook some things and consider the whole. He was, in the whole, a good man.

    Tom Bartel

  • The Death Of A Ballplayer

    I’ve spent all night trying to find the words to describe the way I felt when I heard that Kirby Puckett was dead, and to describe what his life –primarily as a baseball player, but also as a complex, larger-than-life character– meant to me.

    Because he did mean something to me.

    He meant more to me than any ballplayer should mean to any reasonably intelligent adult, and –for all sorts of complicated reasons– more than any ballplayer ever will or could again.

    I’ve been thinking about that since I first heard the sad news, and I’ve read many of the words that other people have already written about Kirby’s life and his death, but I’m still not close to finding any appropriate words of my own.

    This was a man who gave me a great deal to think about.

    I need to think about him some more.

    I need to remember him, to sort through the waves of memories that’ve been rolling through my head since early last evening.

    All I can really say right now –and this is perhaps pathetic or ridiculous– is that this was a man who I literally believe changed the direction of my life twenty-two years ago, for better or worse.

    For better, I’m pretty sure, but that’s one of those things I have to think about.

    This was also a man who once (twenty years ago) told me to cut my hair.

    If I eventually figure out how to say what I feel like I want to say, I’ll crawl back here and say it. If not, fuck, what a kick in the teeth.

    What a funny and wonderful and tragic life.

    What a splendid, sad, inspiring character.

    What a simple and complicated gift.

    What a ballplayer.

    From The Archives: Uncle Jumbo on Kirby’s 1996 retirement

     

  • Apres

    Sad to hear about Kirby Puckett’s stroke yesterday.

    I happened to be building a fire yesterday afternoon, and had last week’s Times ready to crumple up into tinder. It was the sports section, which I have to admit I rarely read. Which is a shame because it’s lately gotten just as good and entertaining as Sunday Styles. I hate to see these strong sectionsof the paper kind of upstaged by the NYTimes magazine and its various spin-offs, so I’m hereby recommitting myself to the smeary, rank and file folio pages.

    What caught my eye was a package of stories about what lousy sports the American olympians were in Turin. I think Selena Roberts sort of overstated the case–when what she really wanted to do was write yet another pile-on piece on poor, misunderstood, crass, underachiever Bode Miller. Aside from the chronically overfunded, underperforming, belligerent, hard-partying American alpine ski teams, there was not a whole lot of evidence that American athletes are terrible, selfish, spoiled little kids–but even if they are, so what? The day is long since past when athletes of international caliber were expected to act like role models and diplomats for the human race; true, America pioneered the sports hero as well as (more recently) the sports anti-hero.

    Bad sportsmen have always secretly been in the game, but it seemed a longstanding gentleman’s agreement that the press would allow the Babe Ruths and the Ty Cobbs and the Wilt Chamberlains of the world their private lecheries off-the-field; after all, no one wanted to make the kids cry, and if the greats used a little tobacky in the dug-out, well at least they tried to keep it discreet. Times certainly changed. I vaguely recall Dennis Rodman as the great iconoclast who permanently turned things around–perhaps it was Darryl Strawberry, although the cursed Strawberry did seem a morose character who would have preferred to remain, against all odds and evidence, someone to whom the kids could look up.

    On the contrary, Rodman delighted in smashing this stereotype loudly and repeatedly, although one could make the argument that a little public restraint might have saved him from a less ugly public demise. Live by the code, die by the code–and a rebel without a cause doesn’t end up having a lot of reputable friends, especially in the media.

    But the Puck? Whatever his off-the-field problems that came with retirement–and they seemed considerable, if they forced the man out of the public eye and, worse, out of the clubhouse, seemingly for good–Kirby earned so much good karma on the field and in the public eye that he will always be remembered as a good sport and a generous human being, a franchise player, a hall-of-famer. One of those guys who, in representing the best of the game, came to represent the best of being human.

  • An Oscar Bright Spot

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    An actor for president? No way Americans would ever do that.

    Our old friend David Carr did a nice job of blogging from the Oscars yesterday.

    But perhaps his best observation was to simply quote George Clooney’s acceptance speech. In case you were watching a basketball game or something, here it is: “You know, we are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood every once in a while. I think it’s probably a good thing. We’re the ones who talked about AIDS when it was just being whispered, and we talked about civil rights when it wasn’t really popular. And we, you know, we bring up subjects. This Academy, this group of people gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters. I’m proud to be a part of this Academy, proud to be part of this community, and proud to be out of touch.”

    For my money, this guy’s a lot more in touch with how things actually are than our buddy Bush. Another good piece in the Times this morning by Paul Krugman on just that topic. (Sorry you have to subscribe to read it.) As I’ve said before, you can cancel the Strib subscription if you have to.

  • Spinning out hate

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    He’d be assassinated today, too.

    I wasn’t sure whether I should laugh or cry yesterday when I heard that Michele Bachmann had “scolded” the God Hates Fags protesters at the funeral of the Minnesota soldier who had been killed in Iraq. As Bachmann explained, it’s not that God doesn’t hate fags, it’s just that he doesn’t hate them enough to desecrate a soldier’s funeral.

    No, really. She just wants it put to a vote of the people of Minnesota as to whether or not God hates fags. Michele, do you really think the people of any state should get to vote on what God does or doesn’t hate? That’s what we have a legislature for, right? So, if you can just get your Senate colleagues to vote on what God hates or doesn’t hate, that will just have to do. Leave the people out of it, because, frankly, if we’ve learned anything about what people will vote for these days, it’s that they’ll vote for damn near anything that fills their little minds with hateful crap.

    Michele, you should consider the possibility that appendicitis is only the first warning that an overload of vile prejudice can cause pain…maybe pain sent from, yes, God. Sent to punish you. Yeah, I know the mind of God, too. That’s it. You are in deep shit now.

    I was sort of wondering as you were about to go under the knife, as the pain in your side gave way to the anasthesia, if a thought flashed through your mind: “God, please don’t let my surgeon be gay.”

    The only thing that saved Michele from being the real highlight of my day, however, was the thought of George W. Bush spreading flower petals at the memorial to Mohandas Gandhi in India. You can’t make up stuff like that.

    It gives me a huge pain to even mention those two men in the same sentence. God, please give me a tiny portion of the Mahatma’s capacity to forgive.

    Never mind. Someday, Bush, when someone explains to you who Gandhi was (other than some guy in a Ben Kingsley movie) you’ll be ashamed.

    Actually, you probably won’t.

  • Elsewhere: Things That Are Not This Thing

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    —Michael Thompson

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    —Michael Hernandez De Luna

    Bad Press Books, The Stamp Art And Postal History Of Michael Thompson And Michael Hernandez De Luna

    The Museum of Bad Art

    Soviet Children’s Picture Books From the Twenties and Thirties

    The Golden Age of Iron Men

    Dictionary of Hobo Slang

    Vintage Drug Ads

    Thump Queen: Meryl Truett Photography

    Blue Note Album Cover Art

    Polish Poster Gallery

    Lateral Science

    Dream Anatomy Gallery

    Belly Dancers and Harem Girls

    Briefcase Full of Meat

    The Enchanted World of Rankin and Bass

    World Wide Wounds

    Film Titles By Saul Bass

    Snow Globes by Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz

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  • All Arabs Look Alike

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    “Ok, Cheney, just you and me. Shotguns at 10 paces.”

    I just couldn’t let this go, but it popped onto my computer a few minutes ago when I used Yahoo for the first time in months. The headline that jumped at me was this: Bush Confident Bin Laden Will Be Captured.

    Big talk from a guy who has spent four and one half years “hunting” Osama, which, in case you are keeping score, is now one year more than we spent on Adolf Hitler. And three years more than we spent deposing Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with attacking the United States, and couldn’t have done so even if he wanted to…because he had no weapons.

    The only more preposterous crap we’ve been hearing lately is from all the flacks telling us that there is no civil war in Iraq. Here’s a clue, Sean Hannity: when there is a country that has two factions and those factions are trying their best to kill each other, that’s the definition of a civil war.

    I guess you could say it’s not a civil war only if you don’t admit that Iraq is really one country, and that countries don’t really matter much at all in the Muslim world anyway. What does seem to matter is whether you are Sunni or Shiite. And if you define your boundaries that way, we don’t have a civil war, we have a world war in the making, with the world’s oil supply right in the middle.

    And when that all goes to hell, Hugo Chavez will be holding a lot of cards in the big game. When are we planning to topple his statue in Caracas?

  • Safety Glass

    Peter Beinart went quietly into the night as the editor of The New Republic, and no one noticed except David Carr, who is of course paid to notice such things. TNR has lapsed into almost complete irrelevance, along with the putative political party it was long associated with. In fact, if it is possible to be even less relevant and engaging and more conflicted than your typical mainstream Democrat, TNR managed to do it by dissassociating itself even from him. The new editor-in-chief, promoted from the ranks, is Franklin Foer. He says he looks forward to carrying TNR’s “momentum” forward, but considering the fact that the magazine has hemmoraged forty percent of its circulation in the last few years, and now prints fewer pages per issue than your typical government pamphlet, it’s not clear what momentum he is referring too, other than maybe the subtle force that carries us all inexorably to the same destination–our final resting place. The fact of the matter is that TNR needs what Stephen Glass once pretended to give the magazine–actual reported stories from the fringes of Americana that were damn fun to read. The world needs more humorless liberal armchair commentary about like it needs another Canary Island, so here’s hoping Frank Foer all good luck with a magazine that desperately needs some fire in the belly… like it had in the days of Rik Hertzberg, Michael Kelly, and even the waxen Michael Kinsley.

  • This Planet of Dreams

    Surely you’re aware that there are dreams all around you.

    You’re moving through them everywhere you go. They’re on every block and corner of the city you live in, and flickering behind the curtains and shades up and down every street. Open the Yellow Pages of your local phone book –what is that if not a catalog of dreams?

    And beyond or behind all of those dreams just blooming or being born are millions –tens of millions– of dreams that have not yet been recognized or realized, and dreams that are withering from neglect.

    It boggles the mind how many things the human heart can invest itself in or wish for, the myriad directions in which it can be cast by hope (so seemingly arbitrary, so heedless, so often ridiculous).

    How can the world contain so much longing? And how can any of us live surrounded by so much disappointment? How can we all be so blind and careless with our attention?

    How many dreams might be salvaged if each of us spent a little more time thinking about how and where we were going to spend our money? Or even if we made the slightest effort to be more curious about the cities and neighborhoods we live in? If we would just poke around a little bit and notice all the little, sometimes out-of-the-way places that represent such brave investments, such modest dreams?

    Because so many of those dreams can only be fully realized when they are embraced by others, when they are finally seen and recognized and nurtured by the attention of strangers.

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  • The Blah-Blah Cha-Cha-Cha

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    In this moment my body wants to evacuate my skin, rattle its bones, and, dancing, dream itself free. Or dreaming, dance itself free.

    But my mind swings so wildly, and in this moment –a moment later– I feel like I am blindfolded, with a broken broomstick in my hands, flailing at a cement pinata.

    Meanwhile, everything is huddled out there in the darkness, waiting for the truth. And terrified, of course, that it will be the awful truth.

    It’s odd how the moon just disappears.

    It’s not funny at all, really, how the night moves.

    (Sits for a time, jangling his restless legs and staring numbly out the window at nothing in particular. Eventually is seized by a burst of what passes for inspiration at five o’clock in the morning.)

    Allen’s appetite appeased, another appetizer appeared.

    An apple almost appears arbitrary.

    Aboard an aeroplane, accordianists amused an audience, almost all All-American acrobats and affirmative action adherents.

    Ask anyone about Arnold; all agree.

    At an art affair, Ashleigh acquired an admirer –an artist, actually, and athletic.

    Acquiring acres as an accomplishment? Alas, all across America.

    Nice try, but I can’t take that idea [sic] any further.

    One last dubious revelation before I shut down this third-rate carnival: the best fishing is when you recognize that you’re both the fisherman and the fish.

    Right now I just feel fished for.

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