Killebrew Is Still Able to Bring ‘Em Out : But He Can’t Hit ‘Em Out, Over the Mississippi River, in a Silly Stunt

MINNEAPOLIS —  On a piece of land called Boom Island, near the Plymouth bridge that spans the Mississippi River, hundreds of heads turn as two police-escorted automobiles suddenly appear in the distance, speeding toward the embankment, spraying dust.

When they stop, Harmon Killebrew steps out of one of them, wearing a complete uniform of the Minnesota Twins over his familiar girth. Sandy Koufax also gets out, wearing a Dodger uniform and a perfect tan.

The crowd cheers at the sight of them. Killebrew glances around, disapprovingly. Something obviously is wrong. He is frowning as he makes his way through the mob and toward the river.

“Attaway, Harmon!” a face in the crowd calls out.

“Go get ‘em, Harmon!” says another.

The man they once called “Killer” does not smile.

Killebrew and Koufax stride toward the shoreline. TV crews follow them, lugging cameras and dragging cords. The crowd pushes closer. Killebrew inspects the clearing, looking for a good spot to stand. He looks across the water and back at the embankment and knows three things immediately:

--That there is no good place for Koufax to stand and pitch the ball.

--That there is no way Paul Bunyan, much less a normal human being, could ever hit a baseball all the way across this river.

--And that this was truly a stupid idea.

He tells Koufax to forget it. Sandy retreats and stays near the cars. Killebrew grabs his fungo bat and moves toward the grade, getting as close to the water as is possible without slipping down the steep, grassy incline.

He flips a baseball into the air and takes a swing at it. The ball flies lazily, maybe 100 feet, and plops into the river. Then it floats back to the top. Killebrew tosses up another ball and fungos it, too, into the water, maybe 15 feet farther. Plop.

He hits eight balls in all. One goes practically straight up, 25 or 30 feet high and 10 feet away. It doesn’t even reach the water.

The opposite bank of the mighty Mississippi, Killebrew’s supposed target in this hare-brained stunt, is not going to get hit with any baseballs today. It has to be at least 800 feet away, maybe even 1,000. There are no booms today on Boom Island.

Killebrew, not smiling, gives up and works his way through the mob, back to the car.

About 90 minutes later, around 11 o’clock Monday morning, Killebrew has changed into a smart blue suit and enters the Grand Portage ballroom of the Amfac Hotel in downtown Minneapolis.

He joins the guests of honor at a press conference called to formally welcome everyone to baseball’s All-Star Game, which will be played on the following evening, Tuesday, at the nearby Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. Sandy Koufax, already seated at the other end of the dais, and Harmon Killebrew have been named the National and American Leagues’ honorary captains, respectively.

When introduced, the two men come to the podium simultaneously.

“I know this guy very well,” Koufax volunteers. He speaks of a 1965 World Series game between the Dodgers and Twins, when all he had to do was get through the ninth inning without harm to put away the game. The Killer came up and stung one. “Harmon Killebrew did the same thing to me that he did to an awful lot of pitchers,” Koufax says.

Killebrew in turn remembers Koufax. They spent part of that ’65 season in Minneapolis not only at the World Series, but at the All-Star Game at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, the Twins’ old home.

“I hit a two-run homer in the game that tied it 5-5, but the National League won the game and Koufax eventually was the winning pitcher. Sandy was the greatest,” Killebrew says.

They are enjoying memory lane when suddenly someone asks Killebrew how it went this morning, when he tried to hit the baseball across the Mississippi River.

“Uh, that was sort of a bad idea,” Killebrew says. “The less said about it, the better.”

The subject is changed. Someone mentions the ’68 All-Star Game at the Astrodome in Houston, where Killebrew’s career nearly came to an end. The Killer remembers it vividly.

Jim Fregosi gloved a grounder, but had to make a quick throw to get the runner. Killebrew, playing first base for the AL, did what he could with his short, thick legs. He stretched out his left foot, practically did the splits, and ruptured a hamstring.

When he got off the field, the Twins’ doctor, Harvey O’Phelan, took a look at Killebrew’s leg. It did not look good. O’Phelan, who is still with the Twins and will be the attending physician at tonight’s game, recalls how serious the injury was and how “it very well could have ended Harmon’s career.”

Tim O’Phelan, the doctor’s son, says: “I can even remember seeing pictures of that leg. His hamstring looked like a real ham. You know how thick Killebrew’s legs already are. Well, it was all swollen and red, like a ham. It looked terrible.”

Killebrew says: “It was a very severe injury, and a lot of people thought I was through. But that injury was kind of a blessing in disguise for me. I worked harder in the winter than I ever did before, and I was in better shape the next season than I ever was in my life.” He was the American League MVP, the next year in 1969.

That began the homestretch of a career that lasted until 1975 and ended with Killebrew holding title to 573 home runs, a guaranteed reservation in the Hall of Fame and enduring prominence in the Twin Cities, where he is the closest thing to a worshipped hero. Whoever scheduled that silly homer-across-the-river stunt should have known better, that people would never miss a chance to see the great Harmon Killebrew up close and personal.

Even with his continuing exposure as one of the Twins’ broadcasters, Killebrew in person was a man to be seen.

“It was supposed to just be me and Koufax and the camera guys, just getting a picture of me trying to hit the ball across the water with the Minneapolis skyline in the background--just sort of a gag thing,” Killebrew says, exasperated as someone asks him about it again. “It wasn’t supposed to be a big spectator thing. It just turned out to be a bad idea.”

His following has never faltered. The Killer was a hero from his first days with the franchise, in the Washington days, when he was a husky young spud out of Idaho.

Gabriel Murphy, the octogenarian who once held a majority interest in the Twins, owning a larger percentage of it than current Twins’ owners either Calvin Griffith or Griffith’s sister, Thelma, looks back on those days with the Senators and remembers an actual senator, Herman Welker, an Idaho Republican, who called the ballclub to recommend that they sign this young slugger from his native state. The Senators took a chance on Killebrew, practically at the senator’s insistence.

Killebrew went on to a big career as a third baseman, first baseman and outfielder, playing in 10 All-Star Games before he was through. The first one, in 1959 in Pittsburgh, is memorable to him not for what he did in it, but for how he got to it.

“We flew over (from Washington) on a prop plane and (Richard) Nixon was on that flight. It was probably the roughest doggone flight I’d ever been on, and there was Nixon walking up and down the aisle, telling everybody it was going to be OK. I remember that.”

Killebrew has many memories. There was the time he became the first man to clear the left-field roof in Detroit--and six different people called to say that they had the ball. There was the time a commemorative mug was issued in anticipation of his 500th home run--and he took a month to hit it. “Nobody wanted those mugs by then,” he recalls.

But now, everyone wants to talk to Killebrew.

“Harmon! Hey, Harmon!” a man yells as Killebrew crosses the hotel lobby, shortly after Monday’s press conference. “Didya hit the ball over the river?”

“Nah. It was kind of a bad idea,” Killebrew says, rushing off.

He gets maybe five steps farther. “Hi, Harmon!” another passerby says. “Hey, did you hit any balls across the river?”

“Nah,” Killebrew says, and keeps going.

Into the elevator. “Hi, Mr. Killebrew!” a young man says. “Hit any over the river?”

“Yeah. You bet,” Killebrew says. He leaves the elevator and starts walking faster and faster, as people in the hotel recognize him.

He reaches the ground floor and gets out. Goes up a back stairway. Reaches the garage where his car is parked.

“Yo, Harmon!” a guy with a beer gut shouts. “How’d you do against that river this morning?”

“Hit three of ‘em over,” Killebrew says, and he climbs into his car and leaves.

“I believe it,” the guy with the beer gut says.