Kirby

I don't know if I like the word "idol." Especially when it's applied to athletes. But at the moment, it's a word that comes to mind.

One of my boyhood idols died today.

Kirby Puckett -- Minnesota Twins outfielder, Hall of Famer -- went before his time. He could have lived 1,000 years and still not been done milking the marrow out of life. He was an exuberant ambassador for baseball. And now he's gone.

Glaucoma cut short his playing career. He played his last game in 1996. He gained a lot of weight. He was in the news for the wrong reasons -- something about a woman he mistreated -- the kind of stuff that makes you realize we dole out that word idol way too easily.

But on the field, his career was the stuff of hero worship -- a 5-foot-9, 220-pound barrel chested bundle of unbridled enthusiasm. He was short and pudgy and hit the snot out of the ball. A .318 career average. One of the most dramatic home runs in World Series history to end Game 6 in 1991. And a ridiculous leaping catch against the wall that kept the Twins alive in that game.

A smile on his face. Always.

Bob Costas once astutely suggested that Puckett's small stature made him a fan-favorite with children. His free-swinging style at the plate should have made him a favorite of opposing teams as well. He once said he never saw a pitch he didn't like.

Rest in peace, Kirby. We'll miss you.

Gimmie a V-Smile for video games

I love video games. And I hate them. I love to play them when they're easy. And for me, they rarely are.

More than likely, I just don't have very good hand-eye coordination. But I'll always chalk up my inability to excel in the digital domain to the fact that I never had a video game system when I was growing up. All of my friends did. All of them. But not me. Video games weren't educational enough for my parents. I think it's hilarious every time I see TV commercials for this thing called the V-Smile -- it's supposedly the "educational" video game system. And you know that the poor, miserable, pathetic little bastard that ends up with a V-Smile is the type of kid who's regularly on the receiving end of atomic wedgies during recess.

The sad thing is, that would have been me. I would have been the V-Smile kid. That's what my parents would have gotten for me instead of the Nintendo that every other kid in the free world had.

Anyway, I digress. I don't want to turn this into a rant against my parents. There's plenty of time for that.

The first time I got a video game system was 1993. I was in college and bought myself a Sega Genesis -- primitive by today's standards, but I played that thing into the ground. NHL '94 absolutely rocked. Ever seen Swingers? Then you know the game. But my system came packaged with a game called Streets of Rage 2. There wasn't much to it. You walked down the street and beat the shit out of whoever came along at you. After a whole bunch of weak little guys who died after a couple of punches, you came up against a "boss" who took a merciless pummeling from you before he finally died. And that was it.

There were lots of games like that. Streetfighter. Double Dragon. Shinobi. But as the video game systems became more advanced, the games changed. They got a lot more complex. More buttons on the controllers, more levels to the games. I dumped my Genesis for a Playstation in 1997. And then hopped on the PS2 bandwagon in 2000. But over the years, the sports games were the only ones I could manage to play. Madden football, of course. Soccer, I love. I've never been able to master basketball. Hockey still rules.

But what bugs me is the lack of walk down the street and beat the shit out of people games for these new systems. Every so often I'll go on a search for some -- I happened to find one this week and I've been having some fun with it.

I've had Grand Theft Auto III for a few years. And while it's fun to just pick up a baseball bat or a 2 x 4 and walk along beating passers by on the street into a bloody pulp for no reason, you get bored with it after a while because the point to GTA III is to complete the missions -- go to certain places, perform certain tasks.

The one thing I'll give to GTA is that at least you know what you're supposed to be doing. I like the concept of big adventure games, where you have to explore vast environments and do a little thinking. But they're not a lot of fun to play because you spend most of your time trying to figure out what to do. I had a game for the Playstation called Akuji the Heartless -- one of those adventure games. And there was one room in that game that must have taken me half an hour to figure out how to get out of. I explored every part of that room systematically and I still couldn't get out. Finally, out of total frustration, I just started randomly hitting buttons and the analog stick on the controller and I just happened to notice a target way up near the ceiling that I hadn't seen before. I can't explain the sense of relief I felt to finally get the hell out of that room.

And as much as I love playing video games, I don't want to have to do shit like that. I don't want to solve puzzles. I don't want to have to press all sorts of maddening button combinations to get my guy to do what he needs to do. I don't want to run around in circles for 20 minutes trying to figure out where the fuck I'm supposed to go next.

Just let me walk down the street and beat the shit out of someone.