There's only one big story in Minnesota today, and it has nothing to do with politics.

Kirby Puckett died Monday in Arizona at age 45. What did Puckett mean to Minnesotans? MPR's William Wilcoxen wrote this:

Two years before Puckett's arrival the Twins had suffered through the worst season in team history. Major League Baseball had recently endured the first labor dispute to force the cancellation of a big part of a season. Some Minnesotans complained that the Twins' move to their new, indoor home was a part of the big business mentality that was taking the innocence -- and some of the fun -- out of baseball. Two World Series titles later, those gripes were long forgotten, banished by a blizzard of Homer Hankies.

The story of his life is well known in part because it all happened so recently. He came from the housing projects in Chicago to play in the outfield of the Metrodome. He was the most talented and the most popular player on any Minnesota team. Puckett's baseball career was cut short in 1996 by blindness in one eye caused by glaucoma. After he was elected to the baseball Hall of Fame in 2001 his personal life degenerated into a series of tawdry stories: a messy divorce, a sexual assault trial in which he was eventually acquitted.

And now his death of a stroke at age 45, not 44 as was reported for most of the past two days.

We'll have more about politics and precinct caucuses tomorrow.