Twins Great Harmon Killebrew Dies

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http://www.startribune.com/sports/twins/122004519.html

When Harmon Killebrew's bulging forearms snapped his bat through the strike zone and made full contact, there was nothing else like it in baseball. His home runs were towering blasts that provided Minnesotans with their introduction to major league baseball.

The iconic Twin, known as much for his humble demeanor as his prodigious home runs, died Tuesday morning at his Scottsdale, Ariz., home at the age of 74 after a nearly five-month battle with esophageal cancer.

Killebrew was the face of the Twins for 14 seasons after the franchise moved to Minnesota from Washington, D.C., before the 1961 season. He is 11th on the all-time major league home run list with 573, of which 475 were hit wearing a Twins uniform. He has the eighth-highest single-season total in Twins history, was a 13-time All Star and the American League MVP in 1969. And he was the Twins' first Hall of Fame inductee
in 1984.

Former Twins star Kent Hrbek, born and raised within blocks of the Twins' first home at Metropolitan Stadium, called Killebrew "Paul Bunyan with a uniform on."

Killebrew became so popular that the street in front of Metropolitan Stadium was named after him, and today is still one of the major roads into the Mall of America. His home runs were such a draw that then-owner Calvin Griffith made the slugger the team's first $100,000 player in 1971