“Don’t feel sorry for yourself if obstacles get in your way. Our great Twins’ World Series teams faced odds and we beat ’em. Jackie Robinson faced odds and made this game truly the national game. And I faced odds when glaucoma took the bat out of my hands, but I didn’t give in or feel sorry for myself. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It may be cloudy in my right eye, but the sun is shining very brightly in my left eye.”

He didn’t take care of himself after he stopped playing, put on a lot of weight. And then came the startling news that he seemed to have been living a double life, a private Puckett at odds with the joyful player baseball knew.

His wife, Tonya, divorced him in 2002 and told police there was a history of violence and infidelity. He was charged that year with sexually attacking a woman. While he was acquitted in 2003, he never rejoined the Twins, staying away from baseball.

It was a loss to him and the sport. He was more than the 10 straight All-Star appearances, more than the .318 career average, 2,304 hits, 207 homers and 1,085 RBIs.

Puck was the nonstop chatter, the rotund body with the stubby arms sticking out. He was an ever-present smile in a sport beset with snarling boors.

“I know this is a job. But it’s a good one. It’s the kind of job dreams are made of,” he said in 1991 as he led the Twins their second World Series title in five years. “I know how lucky I am to play it.”

He grew up on Chicago’s South Side, one of nine children. He became the biggest star in Minnesota, a black man in a state that was 97 percent white.

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MacPhail joked when he was Minnesota’s GM that he had to re-sign Puckett because he’d be run out of town if he didn’t.

Puckett’s greatest moment was in the 1991 World Series, when his 11th-inning homer forced Game 7. After he connected off Atlanta’s Charlie Leibrandt, he bounced around the bases, pumping his fists in the air, yelling and screaming like a little kid.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said. “I was just glad it was over. I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.”

It seemed that night that anything was possible, and then the Twins won the title the following night, when the Metrodome was so loud that it took days for the ringing in ears to stop.

Now he’s gone, leaving behind grieving family, friends, teammates. All that’s left are memories, the personal moments people had with him and the baseball moments preserved on videotapes that now bring on bittersweet memories.

“He was a fierce competitor,” Robin Yount said, “but loved by all.”