Minneapolis Mount Rushmore of Sports: Kirby Puckett, Fran Tarkenton, Harmon Killebrew, Kevin Garnett voted best of the best

The SN Rushmore project named four pro athletes from the 13 cities that have had at least four of the following five leagues represented for at least 20 years – NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, WNBA. While there were no hard-and-fast rules pertaining to the athletes selected, our panel of experts considered individual resumes, team success and legacy within the sports landscape of each city. Multiple players from the same franchise were allowed, and not every franchise needed to be represented. All sports fans have an opinion on this topic. This is ours.
 
The Minneapolis Lakers relocated to Los Angeles in 1960, but you would have barely known the five-time NBA champions were headed to the West Coast. 

"If you look at it, and I did a few years ago, it wasn't a front-page story in our paper that morning," Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Patrick Reusse told Sporting News. "Their last act here was to draft Jerry West." 

MORE: See The Sporting News Mount Rushmore of all 13 cities

Minneapolis, however, was renewed as a professional sports city the following year with the arrival of the Minnesota Vikings in the NFL and the Minnesota Twins in Major League Baseball. 

"That really made us a major-league sports market," Reusse said. 

It's been 60 years of renovations, relocations and rebuilds ever since, but four athletes hold that pro sports history together at the cornerstones.  

Twins first baseman Harmon Killebrew and Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton, the Hall of Famers whose exploits at Metropolitan Stadium are Minneapolis sports folklore staples, were the first superstars after that arrival. 

The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome opened a little more than 20 years later, where Twins outfielder Kirby Puckett's leaping catch off the Plexiglas wall in the 1991 World Series reverberated until the building was demolished In favor of Target Field and U.S. Bank Stadium. 

The NBA added the Minnesota Timberwolves in 1989, and the arrival of Kevin Garnett in 1995 energized the Target Center and softened the blow for the loss of the NHL's Minnesota North Stars, which moved to Dallas in 1993. 

.@KarisaMaxwell, @vinnieiyer, @crabdribbles, and @MicahAdams13 are discussing coaches, which is something we didn't include in our Mount Rushmore project 👀 https://t.co/bmpjBnYrL8

— 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬 (@sportingnews) July 29, 2022

HARMON KILLEBREW (Twins, 1961-74)

Metropolitan Stadium wasn't completed when the Washington Senators arrived from Minneapolis and changed their name to the Twins in 1961. Reusse still fondly recalls attending those games with his father, and the stadium seated 24,000. 

"As soon as the game was over, you could hear construction going," Reusse said. 

The game didn't really end, however, until Killebrew batted for the last time. Reusse said the choice was either to beat traffic or watch Killebrew, and "Killer" always won the debate. 

"If Harmon was the last batter in the seventh, we left," Reusse said. "If Harmon batted with two outs left in the eighth, we left after he batted. If we had to wait until the ninth to see Harmon bat, we did that. We all waited for the last at-bat." 

Reusse estimates that about 5,000 Twins fans followed that rule because Killebrew was the city's "first hero" and a lock for this list. The 6-foot, 195-pound first baseman hit 46 home runs in 1961, which was upstaged by Roger Maris' 61-homer season. The Twins won 70 games in that inaugural season, but it didn't matter. 

"You have to remember what it felt like to have major-league baseball for the first time," Reusse said. "The Yankees came to town, for God's sakes. We got to see the Yankees." 

The Twins also drew like the Yankees in the 1960s with comparable attendance figures. Minnesota led the AL in attendance in 1963 and 1965, and Killebrew was the main attraction. He led the AL in homers from 1962-64, 1967 and 1969. 

The sound. The swing. The trajectory. Those home runs echoed in "The Old Met" and spawned Bunyan-like legends in the Twin Cities for years to come.  

"He had a tendency to hit 'em high with that low uppercut swing," Reusse said. "Then, there is the one series in there where he really felt his muscles." 

June 3, 1967. Killebrew hit a 522-homer into the upper deck in left field, the longest homer of his career. The Twins commemorated the occasion by painting that chair red, and the seat is on the wall at the Log Chute ride at the Mall of America. 

Killebrew had an encore for the next game. 

"He hit the facade further toward center field," Reusse said. "That's still famous in Twins lore, too." 

So are the other moments. Killebrew hit a first-inning home run to deep left center off Jim Maloney in front of the home crowd at Metropolitan Stadium in the 1965 All-Star Game. Killebrew helped the Twins push the Dodgers to seven games in the World Series later that year. Killebrew won the AL MVP four years later. He left an indelible legacy on the 1960s sports scene in Minneapolis, one Reusse still remembers each time he watched with his father.

But it always came back to those home runs.  

"My father would predict that Harmon would hit a homer every time he batted," Reusse said. "He was right 40 times a year."

TSN ARCHIVES: Twins’ Harmon Killebrew named A.L. Player of Year (Oct. 25, 1969)

FRAN TARKENTON (Vikings, 1961-66, 1972-78)

The Minnesota Gophers won the AP national championship in college football in 1960, and the Twins were increasing in popularity with each Killebrew homer in the spring of 1961. 

"The need for the NFL was not near the need for baseball," Reusse said. "They were definitely the third wheel in town." 

Fran Tarkenton, a smooth-talking third-round pick from Georgia, changed that in a memorable debut for the Vikings at Metropolitan Stadium on Sept. 17, 1961. 

Tarkenton replaced Bud Shaw in the first quarter and proceeded to pass for 250 yards and four TDs while adding another score on the ground in a 37-13 victory against the Chicago Bears. 

It wasn't the fact Tarkenton did it. It was the way he did it. 

He circled around the defense while extending plays from sideline to sideline looking for a receiver. It was a style not all that different from the one superstar quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes II and Josh Allen use today. 

"He came in at the end of the first quarter, ran around like a maniac and none of us had ever seen anything like that, even in college," Reusse said. "He basically established them as a team to look at, to pay attention to, from his first game ever." 

Tarkenton helped establish the Vikings as an NFL franchise from 1961-66, often while butting heads with coach Norm Van Brocklin. The quarterback bolted for New York before returning in 1972 and joining Bud Grant and offensive coordinator Jerry Burns. 

"The town went nuts when he came back," Reusse said. "He was on commercials for a local bank and selling Cadillacs like two days after he got here. They had a PR agency that greeted him at the airport. It was a huge deal when he came back." 

The rest is history. The Purple People Eaters defense had a complementary quarterback to lead the offense, and that was good enough for three Super Bowl runs in the 1970s. Minnesota would lose all three Super Bowls, and Tarkenton struggled in those losses to Miami, Oakland and Pittsburgh. 

"They never really played their A-game in the Super Bowl," Reusse said. "One year he was hurt and was playing with a shoulder against Pittsburgh, which was the one they might have had a chance to win." 

Tarkenton left as an icon, however, and he finished with a NFL record 47,003 passing yards; a record that stood until Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino reset the mark on Nov. 12, 1995. Tarkenton would continue that career as a TV personality well after retirement. 

 Is Tarkenton the greatest Viking? 

"You've got Tarkenton, Randy Moss and Alan Page and there would be different groups," Reusse said. "I've always been a Page guy because he won MVP as a defensive player, but you can't go wrong with Tarkenton either. He was extremely important to this franchise during two extremely important periods."

TSN ARCHIVES: Vikings icon Fran Tarkenton named 1975 NFC Player of the Year (Jan. 31, 1976)

KIRBY PUCKETT (Twins, 1984-95) 

Kirby Puckett provided the two most-iconic moments in Minneapolis sports history in Game 6 of the 1991 World Series. 

Puckett's leaping grab off the Plexiglas that robbed Atlanta's Ron Gant of extra bases in the third inning. That, and the  11th-inning walk-off homer off Charlie Leibrandt with Jack Buck's legendary call — "And we'll see you tomorrow night!" – are easy to pull up at any time. 

Yet Reusse somehow drifts to a 1994 spring training game in Fort Myers, Fla. Puckett hit leadoff that day in a game played after a thunderstorm. 

"He hit a routine ground-ball to shortstop on a wet field and beat it out for a hit," Reusse sasid. "The guy didn't bobble it at all, and (Puckett) still beat it out. That just kind of told you he never in his life didn't run his ass off to first base. He wanted hits. He loved hits."

The 5-foot-8, 178-pound centerfielder collected 2,304 hits through a dozen memorable seasons with the Twins. He was the energy behind those World Series championship teams in 1987 and 1991. 

Puckett jump-started that '87 championship run with an incredible two-game stretch in Milwaukee from Aug. 29-30. He went 4 of 5 with two homers the first night, then followed by going 6 of 6 with two more homers the next night. 

"It was funny how he cleared his mind to hit," Reusse said. "His mind just raced. You never knew what he was going to say next." 

Enter Game 6 against Atlanta on Oct. 26, 1991. Puckett already made the play of the game in the third inning when he stretched every inch up the Plexiglas for the leaping catch against Gant. 

Reusse recalled Puckett's thought process when Atlanta brought in Leibrandt in the 11th-inning. 

Puckett was 1 for 18 in the series and had struck out twice against Leibrdandt in Game 1. Puckett told Chili Davis he was going to bunt in the on-deck circle. Davis told Puckett with colorful language to hit a home run instead. 

"Then, 20 seconds later (Puckett) is screaming at the top of his lungs to Rich Stelmaszek, the bullpen coach," Reusse said. "It's crowded but he could barely hear him, but he and Stelly were both from different parts of south Chicago, OK? They were buddies, and he is screaming, 'Stelly! Stelly!'"

Stelmaszek then looked at Puckett, who had changed his mind. Puckett made a bold prediction with that same colorful language. 

"'This f------ game is over."

"Then he hit the home run. He went from bunting to knowing he was going to hit a home run to win the game. It was incredible," Reusse said.

The Twins won the next night, too. 

Puckett's 12-year career was cut short in 1996 when he lost vision in his right eye, and he unexpectedly died in 2006 at the age of 45. Yet Reusse still looks back at the career and remembers the catalyst that gave Minneapolis championship credentials. 

"His baseball instincts were impeccable," Reusse said. "He was a baseball savant and also the best guy in the clubhouse I ever saw."

TSN ARCHIVES: Twins icon Kirby Puckett, an appreciation (July 22, 1996)

KEVIN GARNETT (Timberwolves, 1995-2007, 2014-16) 

The Minnesota Timberwolves averaged 21 victories in their first six seasons from 1989-95 before taking a 6-foot-11 forward from Farragut Career Academy in Chicago with the No. 5 pick in the 1995 NBA Draft. 

Kevin Garnett was the first high school player taken with a first-round pick since Daryl Dawkins in 1975. Remember, high school phenoms were not seen in the same viral bandwidth in those days. 

"We didn't know," Reusse said. "He was the fifth choice that year. It was a novelty when he was coming out of high school. There had not been many. He started the whole phenomenon of coming out of high school. Kobe was the next year.

"He was 6-11. He wasn't rugged, and I think people were curious but we weren't convinced that we were getting an all-time NBA great," he said. "He had fierce competitiveness combined with his incredible defense. He wasn't a great shooter, but he was obviously a great scorer." 

Garnett would not win five NBA championships like Mikan did with the Lakers from 1949-54, but he brought the Timberwolves relevance during the "NBA Inside Stuff" era. Garnett averaged 19.8 points and 11.4 rebounds during his career with Minnesota, and the Timberwolves made eight of their 10 franchise playoffs appearances with Garnett as the centerpiece. 

That run included seven straight first-round exits, and the break-through finally came in 2003-04. A core that included Garnett, Latrell Spreewell and Sam Cassell pushed the Sacramento Kings to Game 7 in the Western Conference semifinals, and that's when Garnett took heat for his "I'm ready for war" interview. 

"His ferocity is probably what separated him from everyone in the NBA," Reusse said. "The famous game before they played the Kings; he took a lot of heat for using violent metaphors, but that's the way he competed. There's no question about the competitiveness he brought." 

Garnett had 32 points and 21 rebounds in Minnesota's 83-80 victory, and Reusse believes the Timberwolves might have had a better chance against the Lakers in the next round if not for Cassell's hip injury.

Garnett would leave for Boston and win an NBA championship in 2008, but that is only part of his legacy. A total of 28 high-school players were taken in the first round from 1996–2005. Minnesota averaged 42 wins in 12 seasons from 1995-2007 – double the total before he arrived. Reusse estimates that at least 20% of the jerseys in the Target Center today still have Garnett on the back. There is no uncertainty about whether or not Minnesota made the right pick in 1995 either. 

"If you want modern sports time, yes, Garnett is the guy," Reusse said when debating Garnett or Mikan. “He's by far and miles away the most-important basketball player for the Timberwolves."