The ball sailed off Harmon's bat

Our family saw more than its share of Harmon Killebrew home runs.

We saw two the first time we saw the Minnesota Twins at Metropolitan Stadium. I remember the opposing team was Baltimore. It was a classic Twins win for that time period.

Harmon's two homers were complemented by a late-game relief pitching job by Al Worthington. The term "closer" hadn't been coined yet or wasn't in general use. Neither was "setup man."

You could sense when Worthington's time was coming in a game. The P.A. announcer - perhaps it was Bob Casey even back then - would announce him as "Alan Worthington" with a commanding tone.

Worthington was a soft-spoken man who seemed like a father figure to us young boomers. Of course he was a young man, just old by baseball standards. He had the typical type of meteoric career as a relief pitcher back then.
I saw him at the top of his game, and ditto Harmon.

We have lost Harmon. It's another reminder to the boomers of our own mortality.

The Twins arrived on the Bloomington prairie in 1961, when the oldest boomers would have been about 15.

It's impossible to imagine Minnesota without the Twins today. But before 1961, we really were kind of a "cold Omaha," the term that is always trotted out by new stadium proponents to scare people.

We vaguely recall there was minor league baseball. The Millers, right? Farm club for the New York Giants?

The late news anchor Dave Moore had a hard time getting over the Millers becoming defunct, but the rest of us easily made the adjustment. Harmon Killebrew was here. The former Washington Senators moved into Met Stadium.

We might forget that Met Stadium did not immediately draw a major league team. The Millers spent their last years there.

Calvin Griffith became the hero bringing big league ball here.

Us boomers soon came to have a love-hate relationship with Calvin. We saw him as a buffoon type of throwback. We were concerned that he and his family wouldn't have the resources to stay competitive long-term.

We had affection for him like we might feel for a crotchety uncle who avails himself of the cocktail hour a little too much.

Bowie Kuhn described the Griffiths as "church mice" in the changing landscape of the game, a game in which big bucks would clearly take over. Enter George Steinbrenner. The Curt Flood legal case was transformative.

Calvin is iconic in our minds because he brought baseball here, he got us to the World Series in 1965, and he made possible our irreplaceable memories of Killebrew and other stars.

But Calvin's era passed.

The Pohlads propped up the franchise. Us boomers joined the elation felt in 1987 and 1991 as Minnesota climbed to the top of the baseball firmament.

But I felt a tinge of sadness. I suspect many other boomer-age fans shared it. We regretted that the '65 Twins couldn't quite get past the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The '65 season had been so magical.

Metropolitan Stadium was such a simple, erector set style structure. But it couldn't have been more special in the 1960s.

I can still remember how the ball sailed off Harmon's bat in that mid-'60s game versus Baltimore. Harmon had a way of inspiring awe with his home runs.

There's a legend in his family that his grandfather was the strongest man in the Union Army. He apparently won every wrestling championship in sight. The genes certainly got passed on.

Harmon's homers could sell tickets. Our family seemed to have special luck being present for those blasts. So much so, we felt denied when, in a game vs. the Detroit Tigers, Harmon hit a drive which seemed to be kept in the park by a stiff wind.

Surely it would have gone out on a normal day. We felt deprived. We felt entitled. We just expected too much of No. 3 Harmon Killebrew.

He was an easy man to like at all levels. At the time of his recent death, it was easy to see him as the consummate hero getting past all obstacles. It's entirely appropriate to see him that way.

But it took him four tries to get elected to the Hall of Fame. Finally he got the nod, entering that exclusive circle with Don Drysdale and Luis Aparicio. Drysdale was one of those Dodgers in 1965. Aparicio was a slick fielding shortstop.

Drysdale had his best year in 1968 as remembered in the movie "Bobby" about the assassination of RFK. A kitchen worker at the Ambassador Hotel coveted his tickets to a Dodgers game. I considered it a good movie, a good lens for that time period, but it seemed to fade quickly.

There were baseball observers who considered Killebrew too much of a one-dimensional player. This view was revived when "The Killer" got elected to the Hall. I remember a friend reacting to that "one dimension" criticism by saying "What? You mean RBIs?"

The "one dimension" generally thought of, is home runs. But home runs push lots of runs in, naturally.

What critics assert is that Harmon didn't do enough in other elements of the game. He was considered slow afoot.

He actually was quite faster at one time, but we learn that a pulled quadriceps in 1962 and a knee injury prior to the '63 spring training knocked him down. An alleged lack of speed could obviously affect range in the field.

Harmon was competent at third base, first base and the outfield. But was he fast enough?

If a ball was hit to him, he could handle it. He was a naturally gifted baseball player. The problem might have been the balls he didn't get to. It's hard to know how big a handicap this might have been.

But Harmon's homers should have made him a no-brainer for the Hall right away. He retired as the American League career leader in home runs by a right-hander.

Babe Ruth was of course left-handed. He was also a Yankee, an affiliation which has always seemed to prop up one's status and reputation.

If Harmon had been a Yankee? I don't think we would have had to wait until 1984 for him to enter the Hall.
The Yankees have a special history that at times seems deserved, at times not. The Billy Crystal movie "61*" (yes, with asterisk) made all of the Yankees of the early '60s seem special.
The movie showed our new Minnesota Twins watching in awe as Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris took batting practice.

It seemed to be as much a movie about sportswriters and newspapers, as baseball.

Newspapers created legends. So could writers like Roger Kahn. It was a New York-centered universe.

That's why Killebrew's famous homer midway in the 1965 summer became a signature moment for him. It broke the Yankees' back.

There were signs the Yankees were already in decline. Harmon stepped up to bat on July 11 of '65 and hit a two-run homer to give Minny the win at Met Stadium. It was the day before the All-Star break.

Billy Crystal might have sobbed but us Minnesotans were ecstatic. Not only were we excited, we were truly "on the map."

It was still impossible to dislodge most top writers from their New York-centered view of things. Roger Angell, a card-carrying member of that elite circle, would later have a chapter name for a book: "West of the Bronx." He was reflecting on that changing of the guard in the '65 baseball season.

He couldn't omit a reference to the Big Apple. Let's trot out one of Sarah Palin's favorite terms: "lamestream media."

The sportswriters in the movie "61*" were all about New York City.

But we of course had Sid Hartman.

There was an inevitable inferiority complex out here, but winning does a lot to alleviate that.

If we just could have won Game 7 of that '65 Series. Sandy Koufax pitched like he was a god down from Mount Olympus.

The Dodgers' rotation had to be altered for that Series because of a Jewish holiday. Koufax was Jewish. He was a lefthanded terror in the eyes of batters.

You might read on occasion that Koufax was an ordinary pitcher early in his career before "finding himself." That may actually be funny, because what actually happened, based on an authoritative account I read, is that umpires adjusted the strike zone. They started calling the high fastball a strike.

It wasn't so high anymore.

The rest is history. Koufax dazzled the Twins in '65 and we had to wait until '87 and a new generation of Twins - you know, "Bruno" and the rest.

But my memories of "The Killer" will always be tops.

Harmon Killebrew, RIP.

- Brian Williams - morris mn Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com