Puckett's statue unveiled

Shortly before noon, past Twins luminaries unveiled a large bronze statue of the late Kirby Puckett, located at Gate 34, numbered in honor of the number the Hall of Famer wore as a Twin. Jerry Bell, president of Twins Sports, Inc., recalled that when Kirby was called up to the big-league team, skeptics wondered, "WHO are we bringing up? Who we brought up became the face of the franchise … we miss Kirby today." Longtime Twins announcer John Gordon called Puckett "a player who embodied Minnesota Twins baseball. It was truly a gift to have watched Kirby Puckett play baseball." Kent Hrbek, Rod Carew, Harmon Killebrew and Tony Oliva hugged and slapped each others' backs when they arrived. "There he is – you made it," Hrbek said to Killebrew. "Hey, Rod, good to see you." Oliva did a fist bump with a tiared Little Miss Baseball, eight-year-old Shovana Rydeen. "How you doing, princess?" he asked her. Shovana said she attained the pageant title by "answering a lot of hard questions about baseball."