Kent Hrbek - Retirement

Retirement

Frequently injured (though seldom seriously), Hrbek retired after the players strike in 1994, citing his nagging injury problems and desire to spend more time with his wife and daughter at their home in Bloomington, MN. Despite operating in the same lineup as Kirby Puckett for all but two years of his career, and his long and close association with Puckett, Hrbek's numbers never approached those of the center fielder, and it is generally agreed that his career, while long and productive, was not Baseball Hall of Fame material - on the list of similar good-but-not-great players such as Eric Karros, Will Clark, Greg Luzinski, David Justice, and Vic Wertz. In 2000, his first year of Hall of Fame eligibility, Hrbek garnered only 5 votes, nowhere near the 5% minimum threshold for continued eligibility, and is thus ineligible for the Hall of Fame unless voted in by the Veterans Committee. His first year of Veterans' Committee eligibility is 2015.

Kent Hrbek's number 14 was retired by the Twins in 1995, becoming at the time only the fourth (along with Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, and Tony Oliva) in franchise history. Hrbek was also inducted into the Minnesota Sports Hall of Fame in 1996. He was also one of few players then (which is even rarer today) who played out his entire career with only one team.

In 2000, the Twins established their own "Minnesota Twins Hall of Fame" and Hrbek was one of six former Twins inducted into the initial class. The 2000 class also included MLB Hall of Famers Rod Carew, Harmon Killebrew and Kirby Puckett, player and Twins coach Tony Oliva, and former owner Calvin Griffith.

Kent Hrbek hosted an outdoor sports program on FOX 9 called Kent Hrbek Outdoors for six years ending in 2009. Hrbek is a perennial pitchman for Twin Cities-area HVAC company Carrier Heating and Air Conditioning. He has a series of baseball fields named after him in his hometown of Bloomington, Minnesota. Since Kent Hrbek’s father died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease) in 1982, he has worked to increase awareness of the disease. Hrbek hosts an annual charity golf tournament in Minnesota to raise money for ALS research, and makes many public appearances on behalf of the cause.