Twins To Honor Tom Kelly With Bronze Statue

Several members of the 1987 Minnesota Twins World Series championship team were on the 1500ESPN stage for a half-hour with Patrick Reusse on Friday night. Following the on-air portion, the players stayed on the stage along with their manager, Tom Kelly.

Twins President Dave St. Peter came to the stage and announced to the crowd that the Twins would be adding an eighth bronze statue to their collection surrounding Target Field. Work has begun on a bronze statue of Twins manager Tom Kelly.

“The Minnesota Twins are excited to have this opportunity to further celebrate and recognize the incredible career of the one-and-only Tom Kelly,” Twins President & CEO Dave St. Peter said. “Tom’s contributions to the Twins organization and Upper Midwest baseball community are quite significant. This statue will help memorialize Tom’s greatness and ensure future generations are aware of the T.K. story.”

Kelly told reporters following the announcement that he has known for a couple of weeks. They are currently working on the pose, spending a lot of time on which uniform he'll be in. There was no timeline given for completion.

Kelly joins several legendary Twins figures to be honored with a bronze statue including Kirby Puckett, Rod Carew, Harmon Killebrew, Kent Hrbek, Calvin Griffith and the Pohlads (Carl and Eloise).

Five years ago, Kelly's #10 was retired by the organization.

As per usual, Kelly remained humble in talking about the honor, noting even his hesitance to promote it happening in previous years. He prefers to point out that the game is about the players on the field not their manager. And likely, that is why he was as successful as a manager and leader as he was.

Here is a live twitter feed of the announcement as well as some of the conversation with Kelly afterward.

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