The Gentle Giant

When Jim Thome passed Harmon Killebrew on the all-time bomb list, Killebrew was the essence of grace. "Not only is he a great player, but he's a great individual," Killebrew told reporters. "I think he was a little apprehensive about passing me up. I said, 'Jim, I passed a lot of guys up myself along the way. I hope you hit 100 more.'"

That was Killebrew, all right. He was always among the most modest of men, always a man who made anyone in his presence feel at home, maybe even the pitchers who surrendered his home runs, many of which — like those by Mike Schmidt, Eddie Murray, and Darryl Strawberry in the generation to follow — weren't merely home runs, they were conversation pieces.

And now I'm writing with a horror in my heart. On no less than Friday the 13th I wrote (on my regular baseball blog) of the sad news that Killebrew had gone public with what his doctors finally had to tell him, that his battle against esophageal cancer was lost and it was now just a matter of time. Killebrew courageously announced his entry into hospice care.

"He had millions rooting for him when he stood in against the most feared pitchers of his day," I wrote then. "He still has millions rooting him to a sweet, gentle passage, if not an unexpected miracle." Four days later, Killebrew made that sweet, gentle passage, 74-years-old. Daring to hope, I didn't think it would take that little time from his announcement to make the passage.

When Killebrew announced the original diagnosis last December, he vowed to make a fight of it. And nobody doubted he'd give the bastard a run for its money. A man who grows up modestly around the Idaho potato farms, assumes the mantle of a franchise slugger likewise, admits washing dishes is his unusual hobby, makes everyone from the greenest or brashest rookies to the crustiest or most exhausted veterans feel at home in the clubhouse, and gently shepherds teammates and prospects alike on etiquette on and off the field (Killebrew among other things has been celebrated for teaching players to make their autographs legible), isn't going to let something like cancer keep him from quietly celebrating life itself and the profession that made his name.

With the possible exception of Frank (Capital Punishment) Howard, who became a conversation-piece home run hitter in a Washington Killebrew's Twins had departed several years earlier, there may have been no more inappropriately nicknamed player in baseball history. Everyone around him knew "Killer" had only to do with his surname tied to his long-ball power. It had absolutely nothing to do with his personality.

I have a few favorite Harmon Killebrew stories myself. They all say plenty about this sweet man whose company I never had the pleasure of enjoying but whose company you felt, somehow, whenever someone wrote of him during and after his career.

When he was a Washington Senators comer, Killebrew consented to join team broadcaster Bob Wolff in a civilian practical joke. Wolff took the young bombardier to a fathers-and-sons game in the area, Killebrew dressed as casually as the guy next door who was about to drop a few steaks on the grille. "After you hit the ball 10 miles," Wolff said prankishly, "we'll tell 'em, 'that's Harmon Killebrew'." Killebrew stood in and took a pitch from a kid heaving a softball. He swung. He missed. He couldn't hit a softball with a garage door. The kid heaved another one, and Killebrew barely whacked it back to the mound. Wolff hollered out that the catcher tipped the bat and there should be another pitch. This time, the Killer barely tapped it.

Perhaps realizing his great prank idea was about to get his protagonist punk'd (though it wasn't quite called that in the late 1950s), Wolff sprung his little surprise on the gathering, clearly aiming to get Killebrew off the hook. "Harmon Killebrew is the batter, but he has a great heart. He doesn't want to lose the only softball you've got. But just to show his power, he'll fungo it and we'll bring it back." Killebrew tossed the ball up and swung. He popped it up. "Don't worry," Wolff consoled Killebrew on the ride back to Griffith Stadium. "You'll be a Hall of Fame player in hardball. Just skip the softer stuff."

You might think that gag lingered with Killebrew when, in 1985, he was named an honorary captain of the American League all-star team, as Sandy Koufax (against whom Killebrew went 3-for-9 with two strikeouts, a walk, and an RBI single in the 1965 World Series, including being one of only two Twins non-pitching starters not to strike out against Koufax in Game 7) was named likewise for the National League.

Killebrew agreed to partake of a little stunt with Koufax — the two Hall of Famers would be chauffeured to the banks of the Mississippi. (The 1985 All-Star Game was played in Minneapolis.) Koufax would throw a pitch, and Killebrew would try to hit it across the river. Five thousand fans, and one kid in catching gear, greeted the two. But then the two men arrived at the designated site, and the Killer balked.

Killebrew took one look at the whole carny setup, the 800-foot width of the river, and told Koufax, "No f—ing way." He wasn't about to help embarrass the greatest lefty in history. "Kid," he said, wrapping his arm around the disappointed boy, "you ain't catching Koufax today."

— Jane Leavy, in Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy

It's not that Killebrew needed to be taught dignity, but he might have had a surreal early reminder. During 1959, Life planned a pictorial feature about the gentle fellow with the orbital home runs. They began following Killebrew's trail and Killebrew went into a home run slump. It took several days, and President Dwight Eisenhower in the Griffith Stadium audience, before Killebrew finally caught hold of one and drove it out.

Unfortunately, the Life staffers on Killebrew's trail got a red alert the day Killebrew finally launched one for them — they'd been tipped that Pittsburgh Pirates left-hander Harvey Haddix was threatening to stay perfect into extra innings in Milwaukee, and they'd better high-tail it due northwest post haste. They speak now of the Sports Illustrated cover curse; they didn't think then of the Life pictorial curse. Harmon Killebrew couldn't hit one out while Life was first following him, and Haddix lost his perfecto, his no-no, and the game in the 13th inning when the magazine turned hard left to pick him up while he was still on.

It probably didn't bother Killebrew all that much. He was as agreeable when he met people and signed autographs as he was modest to a fault about his abilities. When he hit his first major league bomb, Detroit Tigers catcher Frank House chided the rook by telling him what was coming. The kid took the catcher's word as law and jumped all over Billy Hoeft's heater. The ball traveled 476 feet over the fence.

Without a bat in his hands, Killebrew had no intention of calling attention to himself. With a bat in his hands, Killebrew was impossible to ignore, even in the enemy dugout. In 1963, with both the Twins and the Boston Red Sox well out of the pennant race, and those two teams squaring off to open the Red Sox's season-ending homestand, was whether Killebrew or Red Sox first baseman Dick (Dr. Strangeglove) Stuart, a man whose prodigious power was equaled only by his prodigious ineptness in the field, would finish as the American League's home run king.

The two sluggers were tied at 40 bombs as the set began with a doubleheader in Fenway Park, heaven on earth for right-handed bombardiers. The Twins smothered the Red Sox, 13-4, in the opener, with Killebrew going long thrice (a solo shot off Boston starter Bill Monbouquette; a solo shot off reliever Pete Allen; and, a grand slam off reliever Arnold Earley) and Stuart going a mere 1-for-4, a homer off Twins reliever Lee Stange. Between them, Killebrew and Stuart accounted for half the bombs hit in that game. (George Banks and Don Mincher also went long for the Twins; Lu Clinton and Russ Nixon went likewise for the Red Sox.)

With Killebrew at 43 and Stuart at 41, the two squared off again in the second game, which the Red Sox won in nearly reverse scoring, 11-2. Killebrew hit one out off Gene Conley midway through the game; Stuart hit nothing out but did pick up an RBI double and a bases-loaded single to push his RBI total to 115. In the third and final game of the set, Killebrew hit another one out off Bob Heffner (Banks and Jimmie Hall also went long for the Twins), while Stuart hit nothing out but picked up another RBI double, this time off winning pitcher Camilo Pascual as the Twins beat the Red Sox, 6-1.

Stuart would hit one more bomb as the season closed; Killebrew didn't hit another one out over the season's final three days. "The last day of the season," Boston relief star Dick Radatz would remember, "Stuart said in the paper, 'Hell, Killebrew had a distinct advantage. If I could have hit against our pitching staff, I'd have hit ten'."

Killebrew wasn't a great fielder; he wasn't as terrible a fielder as people sometimes remembered him to be, either. His run productivity made him a Hall of Famer, but he was a league-average fielder with slightly above-average range factors at first and third bases. His flaw as a defensive player was a modest throwing arm; it was probably his modest defense and batting average (it would be years before analysts and Hall of Fame voters alike understood how deceptive the batting average can be) that left him with four tries before he was finally elected to Cooperstown in 1984, almost a decade after he retired.

In some ways, it's a shame that Killebrew's genial, retiring image kept people from thinking long and hard about just how prodigious he was as a home run hitter and run producer. For the entire decade of the 1960s, he actually out-bombed Hank Aaron, 395-375 ... in 619 fewer plate appearances. He'd missed time in 1965 due to a separated elbow; he'd missed time in 1968 due to a leg injury; he came back in 1969 to lead the majors with 49 homers and 140 RBI, and the American League with 146 runs created, and a whopping 145 walks — all but 20 of which he worked out himself.

But the Killer was just too nice and retiring a fellow to make any kind of public name for himself once he'd rounded the bases after yet another conversation piece shot. The only thing more red than the bleacher seat the Twins painted after a Killebrew bomb hit it — 520 feet from home plate — was probably Killebrew's friendly mug.

"He hit line drives that put the opposition in jeopardy," Ossie Bluege, the one-time Senators standout who scouted Killebrew for the organization in the 1950s. "And I don't mean the infielders. I mean the outfielders."

And he left nothing but a trail of admiration and liking. Duke Ellington once said of Louis Armstrong, "He was born poor, died rich, and never hurt anyone along the way." They're probably saying that now about Harmon Killebrew (who enjoyed success in insurance and financial planning work after his playing career ended), without flinching. That, and how this, above and beyond most in baseball about whom it's been said, really is like loss in the family. The loss of a gentle warrior who lost at last, to the one pitcher he couldn't hit, though the God of his fathers knows how hard he tried.

When Killebrew announced he had no choice but to stop the fight against an enemy now determined terminal, all I wished was that his passage would be gentle and sweet. With his wife, Nita, by his side, and his nine children in his corner, it could be nothing but.

But I didn't expect or wish it to be this swift. I thought we might have months, if not years, yet to enjoy knowing that a Harmon Killebrew was still among us. It's not the first time I was wrong — regarding baseball or anything else — and it probably won't be the last. But it's one of those times you wish with all your heart that you'd been right.

* * *

The Killer Against the Famers, and Other Observations

In case you're curious, here is how Harmon Killebrew fared hitting for distance against the fifteen Hall of Fame pitchers he faced during his 22-season major league career.

Against Juan Marichal: 3 plate appearances; no home runs
Against Bob Lemon: 4 PA; 0 home runs
Against Don Drysdale: 6 PA; 1 HR
Against Ferguson Jenkins: 9 PA; 1 HR
Against Sandy Koufax: 10 PA; 0 HR
Against Goose Gossage: 13 PA; 0 HR
Against Gaylord Perry: 20 PA; 1 HR
Against Early Wynn: 33 PA; 1 HR
Against Rollie Fingers: 36 PA; 4 HR
Against Nolan Ryan: 37 PA; 1 HR
Against Robin Roberts: 43 PA; 4 HR
Against Hoyt Wilhelm: 60 PA; 5 HR
Against Jim Palmer: 73 PA; 4 HR
Against Whitey Ford: 83 PAs; 2 HR
Against Jim Bunning: 85 PA; 5 HR
Against Catfish Hunter: 91 PA; 4 HR

Per capita, Rollie Fingers was the Hall of Famer who most hated to face Harmon Killebrew in terms of how likely Killebrew was to hit one out against him.

Allowing that there were considerably more right-handers than left-handers to face during the bulk of Harmon Killebrew's career, Killebrew hit 151 bombs against the portsiders against a whopping 422 against the starboard siders — even though he was a right-handed hitter himself. Lining up his bombs against Hall of Famers, it seems of a piece: he hit only two home runs lifetime off any Hall of Fame left-hander compared to 31 against Hall of Fame right-handers — and both those two were hit on Whitey Ford's dime.

If you're looking at Killebrew's career according to whom his favorite patsies and least-favorite marksmen overall happened to be, measured by his OPS (on-base+slugging) against pitchers (Hall of Famers or otherwise) whom he faced 30 times or more...

Most loved to face: Jim Lonborg. (A whopping 1.709 OPS in 35 plate appearances.)
Most hated to face: Bob Locker. (A puny .374 OPS in 30 plate appearances.)
The Hall of Famer he most loved to face: Hoyt Wilhelm. (.889 OPS in 60 plate appearances.)
The Hall of Famer he most hated to face: Jim Palmer. (.638 OPS in 73 plate appearances.)

And, just in case you were wondering, that 476-foot shot he launched off Billy Hoeft for his first major league bomb? It was the only bomb Harmon Killebrew ever hefted off Hoeft in 16 lifetime plate appearances.