Remembering Kirby Puckett

It's not only a sad day for baseball fans, it's going to be a sad week, and probably a sad month now that Kirby Puckett has passed awhile. With that, I wanted to link everyone to a few Puckett-related items on the day after his death.

• 
  
• Jim Caple at ESPN remembers Puck after all the years he covered the Minnesota Twins.
  
• There are some touching comments over at Twinkie Town about Puck, including this:
  

  Kirby Puckett taught me how to love the game of baseball.  I can't ever repay that debt.

  In my baseball-turned-softball glove that I'll be busting out of the closet in a couple of weeks, in the palm of the glove it used to say "Kirby Puckett" in gold lettering.  Thanks to years of use, you can't see the lettering at first glance, but if you look closely enough, you can still tell it was there.  It'll always be there.  

  Touch 'em all, Kirby.

• Aaron Gleeman doesn't talk about Puck, but he tells a similar story that he feels is fitting for the situation.
  
• The Baseball Savant, the reason I blog, wrote a nice tribute to Kirby. Like a lot of bloggers, he thinks back to his childhood where Puck made his name.
  
• Sports Illustrated had a great article about Puck back in 1987:

  "He's got this charisma," says teammate Al Newman. "He's always smiling. I've never heard him booed. When I first came here I said, 'How can this guy throw? How can he hit?' He's the eighth wonder of the world."

  So true.

Will there ever be another player like Kirby Puckett? I don't think there will.