Every name on the list of baseball’s all-time home run leaders tells a story.
Today, one day after his passing at the age of 74, we honor the life and career of a man whose story does not get told enough these days: Harmon Killebrew.
To put his legendary career into perspective, we first need to put into perspective the amazing class of players that Harmon’s career achievements place him in.
Babe Ruth and 714 remain intertwined in history, finally surpassed early in 1974 by Henry Aaron. In a perfect world, perhaps every last one of Hank’s bombs would have come representing a Milwaukee-based team. But as shrewd and unfair as it may have been for the Milwaukee Braves to pack up and leave mere years after being the first MLB team to draw two million fans in a season, Aaron turned out to be the right man for the right time to become the Deep South’s first professional sports superstar.
As Vin Scully said on 4/8/74, ‘What a marvelous moment for baseball, what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia, what a marvelous moment for the country and the world…’
And Aaron did wind up back in Milwaukee for two encore seasons with the Brewers, finally giving American League fans a chance to embrace baseball’s true home run king.
There are, of course, other legends on the home run list. Willie Mays and his 660 home runs, many of them in unforgiving conditions at Candlestick Park, is equally noteworthy. Ken Griffey Jr. (630 HRs) was a natural right out of the box. Frank Robinson (586 HRs) was also an endearing role model for African-Americans, not only as a player but later for breaking the color barrier as far as managers were concerned.
Mike Schmidt, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson, Jim Thome, Willie McCovey – all residing in the high-rent district of 500+ home runs, and all deserving of accolades and baseball immortality.
Then there are the tainted ones.
Who did Barry Bonds hit home run #756 off of?? You forgot already. Do you even know Bonds’ final home run tally off the top of your head?? Most don’t care. Sammy Sosa became instantly tainted the night his corked bat broke, and plenty of evidence later emerged that suggested the rest of him was “corked” as well. Alex Rodriguez is at 619 HRs and climbing, but is scarred. Same for Rafael Palmeiro and unfortunately Mark McGwire.
None of these tainted sluggers will ever see Cooperstown without a ticket, even though they all reached their impressive totals at a time when the game was not properly policed in regards to drug-testing.
But today is about Harmon Killebrew, the classy Twins slugger who lost his battle with esophageal cancer yesterday. Considering the time of his career, and where he played, and that fact that he stood a mere 5’11”, ‘The Logo‘ (the perpendicular elbow stance and pointed nose as giveaways – or are they?) accomplished as much with his power during the era he played as anyone in the history of baseball.
In 1954 Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith acted on a tip and signed Killebrew to a $50,000 contract, an amount that per baseball’s ‘Bonus Rule’ at the time mandated that Harmon spend his first two professional seasons with the big club, during which he displayed flashes of his eventual power but was also clearly not ready for a full-time gig in ‘The Show’.
Harmon spent most of the 1956 through ’58 seasons honing his stroke in the minors before being named the starting third baseman with the big club for 1959, and promptly hit 42 home runs that season.
Home-road splits from that era are not accessible, but it’s worth noting the dimensions of old Griffith Stadium in DC, where the left field fences had just been moved in but were still 350 feet to the left field pole, 380 to the power alley, and 421 feet to dead center, jutting out to 457 feet (around a tree that landlords across the fence refused to let the team cut down) just right of center. Those were not favorable home run conditions for a player playing half of his 154 games there.
After the 1960 season the team moved to a new ballpark in suburban Minneapolis constructed literally right smack in the middle of what was a farm field. And in the pitching-dominated decade that followed, Harmon Killebrew became one of baseball’s most feared sluggers. In his first four years in the Cities, Harmon hit 46, 48, 45, and finally 49 home runs. That’s four seasons, 188 home runs. Killebrew would miss a portion of the 1965 season due to injury, but did enough to help the Twins reach the World Series.
Seasons of 39 and 44 home runs (while being walked 131 times in 1967) followed. The ‘Year of the Pitcher’ that was 1968 did claim Killebrew as much as anyone. Harmon was hitting just over .200 at mid-season but still made the All-Star team based on his rep, but he then sustained a torn hamstring trying to field a throw at first base during the All-Star Game. That horrific injury was supposed to end his season and possibly threaten his career. But Killebrew was back in the lineup before the end of the season.
It was 1969 where Killebrew did his best work: 49 home runs, 140 RBI, 145 walks (late-career Barry Bonds-like walk total), .427 on-base percentage, 1.011 OPS, American League West Champions, American League Most Valuable Player.
Now entering his mid-30s, Killebrew’s career would now take the inevitable decline, and he was released by the Twins following the 1974 season. Harmon then spent one final season as a member of the Kansas City Royals before calling it a career and retreating back to Idaho and the black-diamond ski run eventually named after him.
Killebrew had to face his biggest challenges post-career, running into financial troubles and a health crisis that nearly claimed him in 1990. Fortunately Harmon survived to live many more years, and among other things his legacy lives on with an upper deck seat where one of his longest home runs landed, which resides at Mall of America on the old Met Stadium property.
It’s most likely a wash to decide between Killebrew or Kirby Puckett as the Twins best all-time player. Kirby definitely had the all-around skill-set and defensive skills, and two World Series rings to boot, but one can make a strong case for either player (and Rod Carew wouldn’t be a bad pick for third place of the past fifty years).
That said, one can only wonder what Killebrew’s final tally would had been if his career could had been transported 20 years later into the Twins’ Metrodome era. Without the cold and wind, 650 HRs would had been possible. But like several of the Minnesota Vikings of the Met Stadium era, Killebrew was a natural for the often frigid environs.
Fittingly, the Twins ended a nine-game losing streak in Seattle Tuesday night, with Killebrew’s #3 already memorialized on the players’ sleeves.
Harmon Killebrew the person is gone, just days after announcing his classy farewell to the public; but The Logo lives on, and that MLB silhouette remains forever.
