page_title: Harmon Killebrew
section_title: Post-career
hierarchical_section_title: Harmon Killebrew / Post-career
caption_attribution_description: English: An image of baseball Hall of Famer en:Harmon Killebrew.
context_page_description: Harmon Clayton Killebrew Jr., nicknamed ’The Killer’ and ’Hammerin' Harmon’, was an American professional baseball first baseman, third baseman, and left fielder. During his 22-year career in Major League Baseball, primarily with the Minnesota Twins, Killebrew was a prolific power hitter who, at the time of his retirement, had the fourth-most home runs in major league history. He was second only to Babe Ruth in American League home runs, and was the AL career leader in home runs by a right-handed batter. Killebrew was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1984.
  Killebrew was a stocky 5-foot-11-inch tall, 213-pound hitter with a compact swing that generated tremendous power. He became one of the AL's most feared power hitters of the 1960s, hitting 40 home runs in a season eight times. In 1965, he played in the World Series with the Twins, who lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers. His finest season was 1969, when he hit 49 home runs, recorded 140 runs batted in, and won the AL Most Valuable Player Award. Killebrew led the league six times in home runs and three times in RBIs, and was named to thirteen All-Star teams.
context_section_description: Following his retirement, Killebrew was a television broadcaster for the Twins at WTCN TV from 1976 to 1978, the Oakland Athletics from 1979 to 1982, the California Angels in 1983 and back with Minnesota from 1984 to 1988. While with Oakland, he also served as a major- and minor-league hitting instructor. In the late 1980s, Killebrew had financial problems. In July 1988, his house went into foreclosure and, in 1989, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that he had fallen $700,000 into debt. He also divorced his first wife of more than 30 years, Elaine Killebrew née Roberts, whom he had married in 1955. Soon after, Killebrew's health failed. In May 1990, he was rushed to the hospital with a collapsed lung and damaged esophagus. Together with a subsequent abscess and staph infection, Killebrew endured three surgeries and nearly died. He used a wheelchair for some time post-surgery. By December 1990, his health had improved and he married Nita Patten.
  Killebrew was involved in a Boise, Idaho insurance and securities business. He moved to Scottsdale, Arizona in 1990, where he chaired the Harmon Killebrew Foundation, which he created in 1998. Killebrew founded the Danny Thompson Memorial Golf Tournament, now titled the Killebrew-Thompson Memorial in 1977 with former Idaho congressman Ralph Harding, which is played annually in late August in Sun Valley, Idaho, and has donated more than $15.6 million to leukemia and cancer research. Thompson was a Twins teammate who continued his major league career while suffering from leukemia; he died in December 1976 at the age of 29.
caption: Killebrew in 2007
exif: {}