Minneapolis / St. Paul - City Pages - The Blotter - The body snatcher: Johnson grabs lead in tasteless posthumous Puckettology

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The body snatcher: Johnson grabs lead in tasteless posthumous Puckettology

By Steve Perry in Minnesota Politics

Wednesday, Mar. 8 2006 @ 10:17AM

From the moment Kirby Puckett died on Monday, it was sadly just a matter of time before someone dragged his corpse into the wrestling match over public funding for a new Twins stadium and tried to pin the anti-stadium crowd beneath it. As it turned out, it took less than 24 hours. Yesterday, according to a one-line item in this morning's Strib, "Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson [said] he's received calls from constituents urging approval of a new Twins ballpark named for Puckett."

Nice bit of deniability there--he's only reporting what his constituents are saying, after all. (Are pols in the habit of publicly announcing what their constituents think, except in cases where it serves their own aims? No, they are not.)

Now the question is, what public personage will be brazen enough to suggest that it's what Kirby would have wanted? That his last words, perhaps, before slipping from consciousness were, "Make sure Mr. Pohlad gets... new... ballpark..."?

I'm betting on a team representative, myself. You?