Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,752

This is the grave of Harmon Killebrew.

Born in 1936 in Payette, Idaho, Killebrew up the son of the local sheriff, who also painted for extra money. His father was a big time football player who had been a key part of an undefeated college team at the D-III level. Family stories had their grandfather being the strongest man in the Civil War. The point is not whether that is true, but it’s that the Killebrews were very large, athletic men. Let’s just say that Harmon grew up to be a very large athletic man too. His father had his kids work as farmhands when they were kids and he grew plenty strong that way. By the time he got into high school, Killebrew was a strapping kid and all-star athlete. The University of Oregon offered him a football scholarship, but he wasn’t interested in college and turned it down.

So here was this kid who could play football and baseball but was really just a farm kid of western Idaho and was just playing semipro ball in the area. But rumors started circulating about this giant slugger and eventually scouts made it out there to see if there was anything there. There was. The actual story of Killebrew’s signing with the Washington Senators is amusing. Among the people who knew of this kid was Herman Welker, one of Idaho’s senators. Welker was a horrible senator and a far-right scumbag, but he told Senators owner Clark Griffith about Killebrew. Griffith then sent scouts out, who reported positively, and they signed him. The Red Sox were about to sign him and the Senators scooped them.

Now, in order to sign Killebrew, the Senators had to pay him enough of a bonus ($4,000) that under the bonus rule, he had to immediately spend a minimum of two years on the active roster before he could be sent to the minors. Almost always, this was a total waste of a roster spot. It was here too. He was 17 years old and was very not ready at the start of the 1954 season. He pretty much wasted those two years on the bench, getting 13 at bats in 1954 and 80 in 1955. Then he was down in the minors and up for cups of coffee through 1958. But he had five years of experience, as limited as it was, in the majors before establishing himself in 1959. One wonders if Senators management was getting pretty impatient.

Well, 1959 came and Killebrew turned 23 and started mashing the ball. Out of nowhere, he bashed 42 home runs that year, leading the American League, one of six years where he led to AL in homers. The Senators moved to Minnesota in 1961 and became the Twins and the fans of Minnesota already had a ready to go star. He was basically a very good player from 1959 to 1972. Not a great player. Because all he could really do was hit taters, Killebrew was probably somewhat overrated in terms of the pantheon of the greatest player of his age. But boy could he hit them taters. He was also just ridiculously consistent. With the exception of 1968, that horrible year for batters, when his batting average plunged to .210, he was always going to hit between about .255 and .280, he’d have 80 to 100 walks, strike out about the same and whack somewhere between 35 and 49 home runs. He never did hit 50 homers in a year, which I can imagine was a slight regret, but he hit 49 twice and 48 once. Killebrew won the MVP in 1969 and was a top 5 MVP vote getter in 1962, 1963, 1966, 1967, and 1970. He led the league in RBIs twice, in walks four times, and in strikeouts once. He did learn to take more walks and strike out less as he aged too, which helped extend the quality of his career. That year he led the league in strikeouts, 1962, he walked 106 times and struck out 142. By today’s standards, that’s pretty good. But in 1969, he walked 145 times and reduced his strikeouts to 84.

Killebrew’s power was not just in the total number of homers, but the sheer length of them. When he connected, he really connected. He held the record for the longest home run at Metropolitan Stadium in Minnesota (an astounding 520 feet) and at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore (a mere 471 feet). He also was one of only four players to ever hit the ball over the left field roof at Tigers Stadium in Detroit. The Twins generally weren’t that great, but in 1969, he did lead them to the pennant and was the MVP that year too. He had five additional top 5 MVP years as well. According to Baseball Reference’s WAR stat, his best year was 1967, slightly ahead of that 1969 MVP year. In 1967, he hit .269/408/558 with 44 homers, 113 RBI, and 133 walks. That was good enough for a 6.7 WAR. Players such as Killebrew tend to fair a little worse in the modern advanced statistics than they did at the time, largely because they didn’t add much other than power. Killebrew played third base, but certainly not well, and mostly moved to first in the second half of his career, which he didn’t play that well either, but it mattered less. He was the perfect DH when that came in, as it did at the end of his career.

Killebrew retired after the 1975 season, which he had spent with the Kansas City Royals, the classic last season away from your home team to try and extend the career. He didn’t have much left in the tank though. After his retirement, he served as a broadcaster for several teams over the next decade, moving around a lot, including two stints with the Twins and also with the A’s and Angels. He was a hitting coach in the As system for awhile too. He went back to Boise and started a business, then moved to Scottsdale, Arizona. He converted to Mormonism during his playing career and was known for being a very soft-spoken and nice man, his size and power notwithstanding. He had a series of crises in the late 80s, suffering financial loss, serious health problems, and a nasty divorce. But he got his life back together and lived pretty quietly for the rest of his life, which ended after a diagnosis of esophageal cancer. That was in 2011. He was 74 years old.

Harmon Killebrew is buried in Riverside Cemetery, Payette, Idaho.

According to Baseball Reference’s JAWS stat, Killebrew is the 24th best first baseman of all time. Seems low, but again, players like him don’t always fair that well with these new-fangled stats. In modern context, that puts him between Keith Hernandez and John Olerud, neither of which are in the Hall of Fame. If you would like this series to visit other first basemen, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Bill Terry, who played for the Giants in the 20s and 30s and is 23rd on the list, is in Jacksonville, Florida. Jake Beckley, who played for a bunch of teams but mostly the Pirates and Reds in the 1890s and 1900s and is 29th on the list, is in Hannibal, Missouri. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.