I couldn't believe the headlines. Hall of Fame great and all time greatest Minnesota Twin, Kirby Puckett was dead.

I couldn't help but remember back to 1987, when I, a young baseball fan who played center field for his high school team, attended the greatest game of my life. The stage was old Busch Stadium, which incidentally met its demise this past year, and was it ever buzzing. Everyone who was anyone was there, and so was I.

I was a Mets fan who appreciated Cardinals baseball, which was good fundamental baseball. It was hard for a kid to wear a Mets cap in St. Louis -- you were called "Pond-Scum lover" if you were lucky. But I wore that blue and orange cap proudly.

I guess I have always been a rebel. Here I was in stone washed black jeans and a matching Levis jacket to watch a World Series game from standing room only. I had no idea what it meant, but I knew I was going to the game and that was all that mattered.

I remembered hearing about the Twin’s centerfielder. I saw his name in the box scores. It was said he was one of the best hitters in the American League with some pop too.

Then I saw him. He was amazing. For a large man, he covered spacious Busch like he was an alligator, with a huge jump to close in on balls hit to the gaps. He had speed and strength. Kirby Puckett was not to be messed with.

The closest thing I had seen to him was big burley Howard Johnson patrolling Shea Stadium’s ragged center field. Even this comparison is like comparing apples and oranges. Puckett was an inspiration to me.

Before the game, I managed to wrangle my way down to the center field bleachers. I had to see this Puckett in action, and what I saw shocked me.

He was short like me, but that is where the similarities ended. We might have both been 5’ 8", but he had at least 100 pounds on me. I was a scraggly 118 pounds in 1987, my sophomore year of high school. Though I could bench 280, I still could not seem to develop a set of "guns."

Puckett was like a construction worker on some slow-pitch softball team. Come to think of it, the Twins all looked like lumberjacks or construction workers playing for some softball team.

What amazed me most was that this guy seemed to always be smiling. He was joking with his teammates as the Cardinals fans that were razzing him a bit, especially one already drunk fan who was calling him "Puke-ette."

I only heard Kirby address this fan once, but his response to the drunk made us all laugh, "No, Puke-ette is what you are gonna do by the 7th inning." The drunk slunk off as we all had a good laugh. I never heard another ballplayer answer the ribbing in such a comical way in all my years in those Busch Stadium bleachers. Certainly not my idol of the time, Darryl Strawberry.

Another thing that amazed me that night, and for years to come, was his persistence. Puckett always got hits. He seemed to always hit at least .300 and his power stroke seemed to keep coming.

Puckett got to the balls to save ballgames. He influenced the decision of games as few individuals ever have. But no one ever said we were Puckett as we were pretending to be Major League players in our schoolyard baseball games.

He was a hard-working player that fell off our radar. Even after those Twins broke our St. Louis biased hearts and then put on a show against Atlanta in the 1991 World Series, we never emulated him.

This is where we went wrong. We chased and worshiped the ones with all the talent in the world. We called out Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, Keith Hernadez, Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey, Jose Canseco, and even some South-sider named Thomas. These guys turned numbers for years, but seemed to lack something. In the end they all seemed to let us down, as our heroes often do.

Sure Puckett had his problems, too. His downward spiral with the broken jaw, then the eye problem that turned into glaucoma and forced his retirement. This sent him into a further free-for-all, the messy divorce with the accusations of infidelity and abuse.

Then there was the whole cave man thing, when Kirby threw the woman over his shoulder and made unwanted sexual advances upon her. Though the courts found him innocent of the charges, his reputation was tainted.

It was then I noticed the weight gain. By his Hall-of-Fame induction, Kirby had ballooned to at least 300 pounds since the last time I saw him. You always knew he liked food, but you had to feel for him. Given everything else he had just been through, who could blame him for eating a Krispy Crème, or a dozen. Who am I to judge – you should see what I had for dinner tonight.

However, I think we missed the boat with our childhood heroes. Instead of taking the guys who worked hard to make it to the big leagues like Joey Cora, Rex Hudler, Jack McDowell, Willie McGee, Ozzie Smith or Kirby, we chose a laundry list of talents who never quite made it all happen, or if they did, there were rumors of chemical enhancements that will follow them to their graves.

Why did we pick the guys with the natural gifts rather than the guys who worked hard to make a name for themselves? It comes down to what is wrong with my generation. We want to take the easy route rather than work hard everyday to reach that goal. Perhaps we can learn, before it is too late, that hard work is not such a bad thing.

It reminds me of a quote from a certain gentleman, who by his own right, also took the easy way more than once. Marc Anthony once said, "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones…"

Let us not forget Kirby Puckett the ballplayer, which was really all he ever wanted to be.