The Minneapolis Lakers relocated to Los Angeles in 1960, but you would have barely known the five-time NBA champions were headed to the West Coast."If you look at it, and I did a few years ago, it wasn't a front-page story in our paper that morning," Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Patrick Reu se told Sporting News. "Their last act here was to draft Jerry West."MORE: Minneapolis, however, was renewed as a profe sional sports city the following year with the arrival of the Minnesota Vikings in the NFL and the Minnesota Twins in Major League Baseball."That really made us a major-league sports market," Reu se said.It's been 60 years of renovations, relocations and rebuilds ever since, but four athletes hold that pro sports history together at the cornerstones. Twins first baseman Harmon Killebrew and Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton, the Hall of Famers whose exploits at Metropolitan Stadium are Minneapolis sports folklore staples, were the first superstars after that arrival.The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome opened a little more than 20 years later, where Twins outfielder Kirby Puckett' Chipper Jones Jersey s leaping catch off the Plexiglas wall in the 1991 World Series reverberated until the building was demolished In favor of Target Field and U.S. Bank Stadium.The NBA added the Minnesota Timberwolves in 1989, and the arrival of Kevin Garnett in 1995 energized the Target Center and softened the blow for the lo s of the NHL's Minnesota North Stars, which moved to Dallas in 1993.. , , , and are discu sing coaches, which is something we didn't include in our Mount Rushmore project (@sportingnews) Metropolitan Stadium wasn't completed when the Washington Senators arrived from Minneapolis and changed their name to the Twins in 1961. Reu se still fondly recalls attending those games with his father, and the stadium seated 24,000."As soon as the game was over, you could hear construction going," Reu se said.The game didn't really end, however, until Killebrew batted for the last time. Reu se said the choice was either to beat traffic or watch Killebrew, and "Killer" always won the debate."If Harmon was the last batter in the seventh, we left," Reu se said. "If Harmon batted with two outs left in the eighth, we left after he batted. If we had to wait until the ninth to see Harmon bat, we did that. We all waited for the last at-bat."Reu se estimates that about 5,000 Twins fans followed that rule because Killebrew was the city John Smoltz Jersey 's "first hero" and a lock for this list. The 6-foot, 195-pound first baseman hit 46 home runs in 1961, which was upstaged by Roger Maris' 61-homer season. The Twins won 70 games in that inaugural season, but it didn't matter."You have to remember what it felt like to have major-league baseball for the first time," Reu se said. "The Yankees came to town, for God's sakes. We got to see the Yankees."The Twins also drew like the Yankees in the 1960s with comparable attendance figures. Minnesota led the AL in attendance in 1963 and 1965, and Killebrew was the main attraction. He led the AL in homers from 1962-64, 1967 and 1969.The sound. The swing. The trajectory. Those home runs echoed in "The Old Met" and spawned Bunyan-like legends in the Twin Cities for years to come. "He had a tendency to hit 'em high with that low uppercut swing," Reu se said. "Then, there is the one series in there where he Babe Ruth Jersey really felt his muscles."June 3, 1967. Killebrew hit a 522-homer into the upper deck in left field, the longest homer of his career. The Twins commemorated the occasion by painting that chair red, and the seat is on the wall at the Log Chute ride at the Mall of America.Killebrew had an encore for the next game."He hit the facade further toward center field," Reu se said. "That's still famous in Twins lore, too."So are the other moments. Killebrew hit a first-inning home run to deep left center off Jim Maloney in front of the home crowd at Metropolitan Stadium in the 1965 All-Star Game. Killebrew helped the Twins push the Dodgers to seven games in the World Series later that year. Killebrew won the AL MVP four years later. He left an indelible legacy on the 1960s sports scene in Minneapolis, one Reu se still remembers each time he watched with his father.But it always came back to those home runs. "My father would predict that Harmon would hit a homer every time he batted," Reu se said. "He was right 40 times a year."Killebrew By The NumbersAL MVPs1All-Star Games13Home Freddie Freeman Jersey Run leader6Career HRs (12th in MLB history)573TSN ARCHIVES: (Oct. 25, 1969) The Minnesota Gophers won the AP national championship in college football in 1960, and the Twins were increasing in popularity with each Killebrew homer in the spring of 1961."The need for the NFL was not near the need for baseball," Reu se said. "They were definitely the third wheel in town."Fran Tarkenton, a smooth-talking third-round pick from Georgia, changed that in a memorable debut for the Vikings at Metropolitan Stadium on Sept. 17, 1961.Tarkenton replaced Bud Shaw in the first quarter and proceeded to pa s for 250 yards and four TDs while adding another score on the ground in a 37-13 victory against the Chicago Bears.It wasn't the fact Tarkenton did it. It was the way he did it.He circled around the defense while extending plays from sideline to sideline looking for a receiver. It was a style not all that different from the one superstar quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes II and Josh Allen use today."He came in at the end of the first quarter, ran around like a maniac and none of us had ever seen anything like that, even in college," Reu se said. "He basically established them as a team to look at, to pay attention to, from his first game ever."Tarkenton helped establish the Vikings as an NFL franchise from 1961-66, often while butting heads with coach Norm Van Brocklin. The quarterback bolted for New York before returning in 1972 and joining Bud Grant and offensive coordinator Jerry Burns."The town went nuts when he came back," Reu se said. "He was on commercials for a local bank and selling Cadillacs like two days after he got here. They had a PR agency that greeted him at the airport. It was a huge deal when he came back."The rest is history. The Purple People Eaters defense had a complementary quarterback to lead the offense, and that was good enough for three Super Bowl runs in Greg Maddux Jersey the 1970s. Minnesota would lose all three Super Bowls, and Tarkenton struggled in those lo ses to Miami, Oakland and Pittsburgh."They never really played their A-game in the Super Bowl," Reu se said. "One year he was hurt and was playing with a shoulder against Pittsburgh, which was the one they might have had a chance to win."Tarkenton left as an icon, however, and he finished with a NFL record 47,003 pa sing yards; a record that stood until Dolphins quarterback