Kirby Puckett's family is auctioning off hundreds of pieces of memorabilia, with the crown jewel of the collection being the jersey he wore on the night he hit a game-winning home run in the 1991 World Series.
There are 158 Puckett items, or lots, that went up for bid Monday in the online auction run by Vintage Sports Authentics of Maple Grove.
"This is not something that just came up," Tonya Puckett-Miller, the former wife of the late Twins star, said Thursday. "This is something we had talked about for years."
When their children, 30-year-old Catherine and 28-year-old Kirby Jr., were very young, "if you would've asked them at that time, they would have hung on to all of that forever," she said. "When your dad dies, you want to hang onto every last thing."
Puckett died in 2006 from a stroke.
But now, Puckett-Miller said, her children are honoring their father and turning over a portion of the auction proceeds to the Kirby Puckett Memorial Fund as well as various charities assisting with the community's effort to cope with the impact of the coronavirus outbreak.
"My kids share their father's generous heart," Puckett-Miller said of her children, who live near her and her husband in the Twin Cities. "It's time, and I think that's what Kirby would have wanted as well."
Auction house owner Steve Jensen said the family took the items out of climate-controlled storage early this year in preparation for the auction.