Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett’s Minnesota home is about to hit the market for $485,000 — with Puckett Wheaties and other memorabilia included.
The famed center fielder for the Minnesota Twins built the 3,500-square-foot brick house in 1986.
The five-bedroom, three-bathroom home has a stone walkway leading to a wood door with leaded glass windows and a sidelight window to the left of the door, according to the “Coming Soon” listing.
“When you think about celebrity houses, you think of million-dollar homes. This house is listing at a price that is something a lot of common people can get approved for. It shows — wow — the pay difference then versus now for Major League Baseball players,” listing broker Brandon Johnson told the Post.
A selected MLB salary record is available, and though Puckett’s salary is not listed, the highest-paid contemporaries were paid less than $2 million. Today, Major League Baseball players often make eight figures, according to MLB.com.
Johnson said the back section of the house was “the Puckett area” where Kirby exercised and kept his trophies. But it’s now a carpeted family room with a brick gas fireplace added by the current owners.
The family room has a collection of memorabilia including baseballs, mini-bats, Twins champion pins, Puckett portraits, baseball cards, Puckett Wheaties cereal boxes and other memorabilia.
The shelving in the bar is what’s leftover from Puckett’s original trophy room, said Johnson.
“The cabinets and shelving held his trophies and awards. I thought that was really cool,” said Johnson.
This lower level also has a wood-paneled poker room with stained glass windows and a wood-paneled sunroom.
But when guests enter the front door, they see a more muted version of the house — a white carpeted dining room and, down a step, a living room with a large bay window.
“It’s a nice home — nicer than my home — but humble for a Hall of Famer’s home during his second World Series season,” he said, sharing that he actually looked at buying the home himself.
To the right is the home’s hardwood floor kitchen with wood cabinets, stone countertops, a breakfast bar and a breakfast nook in a five-sided semicircle.
Up a set of stairs with wooden railings are the bedrooms and an office. The primary bedroom has a walk-in closet, and a secondary bedroom has a balcony over the back patio.
“There are some really cool remnants and detail about the build when he [Puckett] lived there — including the drapes” in the primary bedroom, said Johnson. “There’s a Dayton’s [Department Store] tag still attached [to the drapes] that says Puckett. That’s pretty cool.”
Outside, the 0.77-acre lot is on a large pond with 270 feet of shoreline due to the lot’s pentagonal shape. It is outfitted with a gazebo, a back patio and a three-car garage.
The Chicago native received fan mail at this address, as prescribed in a 1989 middle school education packet, and lived there during both seasons he won the World Series, moving shortly before the second World Series he won in 1991.
It last sold in October 1997 for $205,000 to Herbert and Sandra Reierson, sports fans who have collected Puckett memorabilia in their house. They also put in a gas fireplace in 2005, added a deck in 2009 and re-roofed the house in 2014, permit records show.
No. 34 won two World Series in 1987 and 1991 before he retired in 1996 at age 36 due to partial loss of vision from glaucoma. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2001. The home is less than a 20-minute drive from Target Field, where a statue of Puckett stands in his honor.
Puckett had two children, Kirby Jr. and Catherine, with his ex-wife Tonya, whom he divorced in 2002. He was engaged to Jodi Olson in 2005 before he died of a stroke at age 45 in 2006.