Ken Landreaux played for the Twins in 1979 and 1980, and holds the franchise record with a 31-game hitting streak in 1980. I covered the Twins extensively in those seasons. I liked him as a character, but I didn't see him as the brightest bulb in the clubhouse.
There was one early morning – 3:30 is early, right – in New York when I was returning to the team hotel after visiting several saloons. As I approached the revolving door, a cab pulled up and Kenny was the lone passenger.
Once he made his exit from the cab … well, put it this way, I did the assisting for Kenny to get into the hotel, on an occasion when I could barely assist myself to perform that feat.
One quirk I noticed with Kenny during those years was that he used "K.T. Landreaux'' as his autograph. His middle name was Francis, so I asked where the "T'' came from, and as I recall, Kenny said it was because he preferred to pronounce his first name "Ken-tuth.''
As I said, Kenny was a character, and now all these years later, I owe him an apology for questioning his ability for book learnin'.
Kenneth Francis Landreaux is now something I'm not: a college graduate.
To fulfill a promise to his mother, Kenny recently went back to Arizona State to complete a degree and, last week, at age 60, he was in the December graduating class.
An ASU degree is nothing to sneeze at. Ask Chad Hartman, a local radio host and an ASU graduate. He proudly refers to his alma mater as "the Harvard of the West.''
