Please listen to my song about Kent Hrbek

I'm pleased to announce I have an original song about the great Minnesota Twin Kent Hrbek online. My song "Buy a Vowel, Kent Hrbek" is on YouTube. I remember watching a televised game one day where a fan held up a sign, "Buy a vowel, Kent Hrbek." The announcers were amused and certainly this message was clever. But I don't recall that it ever caught on. It did stay in my recollections though, and upon deciding to try to write a song in tribute to the Big Guy, the quip popped back into my head. It seemed perfect.
My song is in 3/4 time. I think it has rather a singalong feel to it. Mr. Hrbek is a fun-loving character so I feel he'd have a sense of humor about it. I think at some point he'd discover it and I hope he enjoys it. The song was recorded at the Frank Michels studio in Nashville TN. I love the Nashville music community. I'll give you a heads-up that my Christmas song for 2018 will include the pedal steel instrument. What a unique and lovely instrument, quite demanding to play. It's closely associated with country/western.
My Kent Hrbek song was ably put online by Brent Gulsvig of Gulsvig Productions, Starbuck MN. If you have any media transfer work needing to be done, call Mr. Gulsvig. The Gulsvigs have a friendly orange cat! Hey, I hope you enjoy my song! So, here's the link and thanks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK8TixePhwQ 

 

Kent Hrbek! We associate the Big Guy with a real golden age of Twins baseball. He helped define that team as it won championships in 1987 and 1991. He was ample in size and some fans thought he could have controlled his weight better. Yes, and fans thought Mickey Mantle could have taken better care of himself. I would never second-guess Kent Hrbek's approach to life. He was the Twins' mainstay at first base.
In 1987 he hit that memorable grand slam against St. Louis in the World Series. The most dramatic Twins home run ever? It would certainly be a candidate but I'd put it at No. 2. Perhaps the greatest moment in Minnesota sports history was when Harmon Killebrew hit a blast just before the All-Star break in 1965. Besides the sheer drama of that, the homer had symbolism because it showed the curtain was closing on the New York Yankees' dynasty. The team closing that curtain, our Twins, were only in their fifth year of existence (although they came here as an existing franchise).
Would you believe that before 1961, we were in "the bushes" with the AAA Minneapolis Millers? Would you believe that before 1956, the Millers played in modest old Nicollet Park? But there we were in 1965, a guaranteed-not-to-tarnish major league team, making the daily big city newspapers all over. Our weather even made national news because it was a factor for our big league games. And there we were in the summer of 1965, not only looking legitimate as a big league franchise, but giving a knockout blow to the one and only New York Yankees, those fabled Yankees, so long a darling of the national media.
There we were, our Minnesota Twins.
Of course the success of the 1965 season would be bittersweet: we lost to the Dodgers in the World Series in seven games. We were really stopped by one guy: Sandy Koufax. David Halberstam wrote a book in which he noted that Koufax became great not because of how he developed his pitching craft, but because umpires started calling the high fastball a strike! The lefty Koufax could throw letter-high fastballs like he was other-worldly.
We waited until 1987 and Hrbek's career before we could savor a world championship. A part of me was actually sad in 1987 because I knew that the new Twins were going to upstage the 1965 team in the state's collective memory. What a shame. The '65 team besides being great helped establish that Minnesota could nurture a big-time and successful pro sports franchise. Before 1961 all we had was the U of M Gopher football team, right? It's interesting how the Vikings and Twins got started at the same time, truly transforming our state's whole persona. We needed to pinch ourselves to see if we were dreaming.
Vic Power, Bob Allison and Don Mincher were early Twins first basemen. Killebrew would ply his glove there too. But Hrbek was the institution at first base for our glory Twins in the late '80s and in '91.
For a long time I considered myself an old-timer with how I considered the '65 memories so important. But now, you increasingly sound like an old-timer if you pine about those '87 and '91 campaigns. It recedes in time like all memories do. The '91 Series was so dramatic it could inspire a movie. Hrbek had his indelible moments in the spotlight.
I'm proud to have written my song about the Big Guy who played first and hit powerfully.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com