Like many baby-boomers who watched Harmon Killebrew beat our Boston Red Sox and other American League teams with titanic, tape-measure shots over (in my case) Fenway Park’s Green Monster, I was saddened to learn of Killebrew’s death on Tuesday.
The Hall of Famer nicknamed “Killer” played most of his career with the Minnesota Twins and could “knock the ball out of any park — including Yellowstone,” as Baltimore Orioles manager Paul Richards famously said in 1959.
It should come as no surprise that Killebrew was also a slugger on the golf course. As The A Position’s Jim Moore recently noted, Killebrew could club a golf ball as hard as he could hit a fast ball and, at his peek, score in the high 70s, low 80s — a feat the humble Idahoan sought to downplay.
“If I was any good, I’d be on tour,” Killebrew told Moore about a year and a half ago.
Far more important to Killebrew than his length off the tee or All-Star baseball career was his philanthropic work, especially a charity golf tournament he founded to honor the memory of a Twins teammate. Danny Thompson was a shortstop for the Twins in the early 1970s. He continued playing after doctors diagnosed him with leukemia in 1974. In 1975, Thompson led all AL shortstops in hitting. He died in December 1976 at the age of 29.
Killebrew, who retired from baseball in 1975, donated $6,000 for leukemia research after his friend’s death. The 22-year big league vet believed, though, that he had to do more to keep alive the memory of his late teammate. He and a former representative from Idaho, Ralph Harding — whom Killebrew met during his post-baseball career as an estate planner and insurance agent — came up with the idea of a golf tournament to raise funds to fight leukemia.
The first event took place at the Robert Trent Jones-designed Sun Valley and Elkhorn golf courses in 1976. Harding pulled some political strings to attract A-list golfer/politicos like Gerald Ford and Massachusetts’ Tip O’Neill. Killebrew sweet-talked Mickey Mantle and other big-name former major leaguers to tee it up for Thompson.
This August will mark the 35th annual Danny Thompson Memorial Golf Tournament in Sun Valley. Last year’s participants contributed $650,000 to the Minneapolis’ University of Minnesota Cancer Research Center and the St. Luke’s Mountain State Tumor Institute in Boise, Idaho. Overall, the tourney has raised more than $11 million for leukemia research.
To participate in this year’s tourney (August 17-August 20) and learn more about it, visit the Danny Thompson Memorial Golf Tournament. To read more about Killebrew, check out Moore’s gentle remembrance.
(Emily Kay is a regular contributor to New England Golf Monthly. Check her out on the Waggle Room, Boston Golf Examiner, National Golf Examiner, and GottaGoGolf websites. You may also follow Kay on Twitter @golfexaminer.)
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