A kid from a Chicago housing project taught himself baseball against a wall with a taped-up bat, got laid off from a Ford plant, and negotiated his own way into a Hall of Fame career. Then, at the peak of his abilities, Kirby Puckett woke up one morning blind in one eye.

This deep dive traces the extremes of his life, from the staggering odds he overcame to the sudden, complicated tragedy that followed his forced retirement.

• How a strike-slashed scouting budget put only one scout on his trail
• Weaponizing his stocky build with a higher leg kick for power
• His iconic Game 6 heroics in the 1991 World Series
• The central retinal vein occlusion that ended his career overnight
• His difficult later years, legal troubles, and death at 45