Monster Card Monday: 1986 Kirby Puckett

I checked back and found that I had posted Kirby Puckett’s 1987 APBA card. As good as that one is, his 1986 card is even better!

For the Twins, he hit safely 223 times in 1986 and 31 of those hits went yard. Not only that, he had 20 steals. That helped him to 119 runs scored and a .328 batting average and a .537 slugging average for the year.

For his effort, Kirby was named an All-Star, a Silver Slugger and won a Gold Glove in 1986.

Kirby has a card which is truly fully-monstrous from an APBA perspective. Yes, he is an OF-3 and fast (including a 15-11!). He hits for power with tasty power numbers of 1-4-5-5. Also, he hits for average. Not only does he have a 55-7 but the aforementioned 15-11.

I suppose if you want to pick nit-picky, you could point out Puckett’s two 14s which is not ideal.

Don’t get fooled by Puckett’s 61-24. APBA put the 12 at 41 in 1986 so he only has one 24 not two. On that note, I think I am in the minority in missing APBA’s tradition of putting the 12 at a different number each year. It was APBA’s “thing”.

By the way, Puck’s 223 hits was second in the AL in 1986. He was next in line to Don Mattingly who has his career year hitting .352 with 238 hits.

The magic of Kirby Puckett continued on. Here is his game winning home run in Game 6 of the 1991 World Series…