Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome was rocking as Game 6 of the 1991 World Series entered the 11th inning with the scored tied at 3.
Somehow, Twins slugger Kirby Puckett was able to hear teammate Chili Davis before he stepped up to the plate against Atlanta Braves pitcher Charlie Leibrandt.
“He said, ‘Make Leibrandt get the ball up,’” Puckett told the Los Angeles Times. “I turned around after I took the first one, and Chili nodded like, ‘Yeah, that’s it.’”
Puckett lifted Leibrandt’s fourth pitch of the at-bat, a high change-up, into the left-field seats, clinching a 4-3 win and sending the World Series to Game 7.
Played on Oct. 26, 1991, Game 6 was the finest moment of Puckett’s Hall of Fame career. With his Twins facing elimination, Puckett went 3-for-4 with three RBI and two runs scored and made a leaping catch to rob Atlanta’s Ron Gant of an extra-base hit in the third inning.
“This game, I’ll never forget right here. It’s pretty awesome. Our backs were against the wall. If we didn’t win, we would have had to go home,” Puckett told the Times.
The Twins limped home to Minnesota after dropping all three games in Atlanta, including a 14-5 thumping in Game 5.
Prior to Game 6, Puckett told his teammates to jump on his back, a promise to carry them to victory that he had made before.
“Everybody asks all the time, ‘Did Puck really say ‘jump on my shoulders?’ He said it every game. He talked more trash than any player I knew,” Twins pitcher Jack Morris told CBS Minnesota.
Puckett backed it up. The following night, Morris threw 10 scoreless innings in a 1-0 victory that clinched the Twins’ second championship.
“When Puck hit his home run, there was a peace that came over me. I knew I was prepared. I knew, more than any other game in my entire life, I was ready to pitch,” Morris said.
Puckett spent his entire 12-year career with Twins before retiring in 1996 after losing vision in his right eye. He was a 10-time All-Star who led Minnesota to two World Series titles and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001.
Puckett died after suffering a massive stroke in 2006. He was 45.
But his heroics in Game 6 live on forever.
“When he made the catch and when he hit the home run, you could tell the whole thing had turned,” Braves pitcher John Smoltz told The Associated Press after Puckett’s death as quoted by the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s website. “His name just seemed to be synonymous with being a superstar.”
