Pat Putnam, a first baseman who finished his major league career with the Minnesota Twins during the club’s 1984 division chase, has died. He was 72.
Putnam died Aug. 25 of natural causes, according to a report published Sunday in Florida Weekly. Andy Hill, who played with Putnam in Fort Myers (Fla.) Little League and remained friends with him into adulthood, said a neighbor found Putnam in his bedroom.
For Twins fans of a certain age, Putnam is a late-summer footnote from a season that almost broke through. Minnesota acquired him in August 1984 while still in the American League West race. The Twins finished 81-81, three games behind the Kansas City Royals, and Putnam’s stay was short.
He appeared in 14 games for Minnesota, going 3-for-38 with four RBIs and a .079 batting average. His last big league at-bats came Sept. 20, 1984, closing an eight-year major league run that also included stops with the Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners.
Putnam played 677 games in all and finished with a .255 batting average, 63 home runs and 255 RBIs. He collected 508 hits in 1,989 at-bats.
The New York Mets drafted him out of Miami-Dade College, but he did not sign. After transferring to the University of South Alabama, the Rangers took him 22nd overall in 1975.
The left-handed hitter tore through Class A in 1976 with the Asheville Tourists of the Western Carolinas League. He hit .361 with 24 home runs and 142 RBIs, winning the league’s first Triple Crown and earning Player of the Year honors.
Texas brought him up in September 1977. His first full season, 1979, was his strongest with the Rangers. Putnam hit .277 with 18 home runs and 64 RBIs in 139 games and finished fourth in American League Rookie of the Year voting.
The Rangers traded him to Seattle in December 1982 for pitcher Ron Musselman. Putnam answered with the best year of his big league career in 1983, batting .269 with 19 homers and 67 RBIs. His Mariners teammates voted him the club’s MVP.
A slow start in 1984 cost him playing time in Seattle. An August trade sent him to the Twins, who were looking for extra left-handed punch as the AL West tightened. Minnesota ultimately came up short, and Putnam’s numbers in the Metrodome did not stick.
He spent all of 1985 with the Kansas City Royals’ Triple-A club in Omaha. With his major league career effectively over, he signed with the Nippon-Ham Fighters and slugged 27 home runs over two seasons in Japan from 1986 to 1987.
Putnam later returned to Southwest Florida, the place that shaped him after his family moved from Bethel, Vermont, when he was eight. He was the first player from the Fort Myers area to reach the majors. After leaving the game, he owned a business in Fort Myers that specialized in air and water purification.
He also played for the Fort Myers Sun Sox of the Senior Professional Baseball Association after his time in Japan. Those later chapters kept him close to the same fields where he first learned the game under his father, Robert, in Little League.
Twins history is full of brief September additions, and Putnam belongs on that list. He arrived with a first-round pedigree and a reputation as a minor league slugger who never quite became an everyday star. Still, he was part of a 1984 roster that included Kent Hrbek, Tom Brunansky, Kirby Puckett and Frank Viola as Minnesota tried to climb the West.
The numbers from his Minnesota stint were modest. The broader career was longer than many remember. Six seasons in Texas, a productive year in Seattle, a late push with the Twins, then two seasons overseas.
Putnam’s path from Fort Myers High School to a first-round selection and then to three American League clubs is the kind of story that used to travel by box score and word of mouth. For a few weeks in 1984, that story ran through the Metrodome.
