My interviews with a "Killer"

I was a sophomore in college when I scored my first interview with an actual star. I called directory information, asked for his home telephone number and dialed him up. He picked up on the second ring.

Just like that, I had my first big story. I walked out of the office of the college newspaper, telling all the other jealous reporters I had just interviewed Harmon Killebrew, a former Major League star.

With the passing of the Mormon slugger from Idaho, last week, I realized he had a hand in my career in journalism. Had he been rude or inaccessible, I may have decided the job wasn’t worth it. The idea to call him came to me for no apparent reason. I had read something about him and decided I’d try to get an interview. I told him I was a student journalists and asked if he had a few minutes. Usually with Hall of Fame-level athletes, that’s an interview-killer. They plead pressing business to attend.

Besides that, how many superstars have their phone listed, even in the 1970s?

I don’t remember a lot about the interview, except that he was soft-spoken, modest and pleasant — and that I was sweating.

“Killer” returned to Utah several times after he retired from playing for the Minnesota Twins. Twice I interviewed him at Franklin Covey Field. He came the first time as a spokesman for Vista Hospice Care, which told me something more about him. He cared enough about suffering people actually do something about it. deseretnews.com

Killebrew was worried about the game back in 1996, fearful that the players’ attitudes were losing fans. Attitude wasn’t a big problem when he played in the 1960s. He even had an off-season job, working for a gas company and a men’s clothing store.

The second time I interviewed him was a decade later. <a href="http://www.deseretnews.com/article/635205929/Killers-eyes-see-trouble-in-baseball.html
” target=”_blank”>deseretnews.com He was back in Salt Lake as a spokesman for “Healing Hands for Haiti,” a rescue effort for people in that impoverished land. Another indicator of a grateful person. It was then I noticed his eyes were a brilliant light blue. I imagined at age 69 he still could see the stitches on a pitched ball. By then he was worrying about the effects of steroids on the game.

Each time I talked with him he was humble and accommodating. In a lot of ways he was fairly unremarkable, except for the eyes. Which is exactly how he wanted it.

You wouldn’t know he was a legend unless someone else told you.