Every once in a while, a baseball personality comes along who is big enough to belong to multiple generations. When Ralph Kiner played his last game in 1955, my father was 13 years old. Back then, the phrase "Kiner's Korner" referred to a section of the left field porch at Forbes Field - where his long fly balls frequently left the yard. When I was 13 years old, I watched Ralph Kiner in the broadcast booth at Shea Stadium, regaling listeners with detailed stories of his playing days. After each game he conducted one-on-one interviews with the players. The name of his long-running post-game show? Kiner's Korner.
As Kiner became more senior he spent less time in the booth, but his stories
continued. At some point in the game, he would join the broadcast team
for one inning, where the likes of Ron Darling and Gary Cohen would ask him
questions they knew would result in the telling of one of his famous
tales. Even as an octogenarian, his memory was sharp.
Despite all of his stories, I still know Ralph Kiner the broadcaster far better than Ralph Kiner the legendary hitter. What I do know is that his
year-by-year stats were off the charts. Consider this... Kiner led the
National League in home runs for SEVEN consecutive seasons (1946 - 1952). Since then only one person has led the league in the category for more than TWO years in a row (Mike Schmidt did it for a "mere" three straight seasons in '74, '75 and '76). In his first five
years in the bigs, Kiner accumulated 215 home runs. That's 14 more than Albert Pujols hit in his first five years, and it remains the major league record to this
day. A bronze cast of Kiner's hands and bat can be found in the halls of
PNC Park in Pittsburgh.
To me, Ralph Kiner will always be a story teller first,
player second. So it seems only natural that I should remember Ralph
with a story of my own. It was several years ago, and I might be getting some
the details wrong, but this is more or less how it goes...
A while back, I was with my parents for Christmas dinner.
It was just the three of us that year, plus an elderly friend of theirs whom
had recently lost her long-time husband. The woman was well into her 80s and
had more than a few stories of her own. As a young adult, she was a fashion model-turned-executive living in New York City. She was able to climb the corporate ladder
and ended up holding senior positions with prominent companies such as Geoffrey Beene and Ralph Lauren. In those days, she
was a beautiful and talented businesswoman, and very well connected.
And so it came to be that one evening she found herself on a
date with an equally young and handsome Ralph Kiner (at this point in hearing the story, my lower jaw virtually fell
to the floor, but she was just getting started -- as it turns out, the date with
the future Hall of Famer was just the context for what happened next). She was
at a nice restaurant, dining with Mr. Kiner, when none other than JOE DIMAGGIO
walked in! The woman, having lived in New York for a while now, was a big
DiMaggio fan. As such, she asked the Pirates' slugger if he could introduce them. Ralph, being
a gentleman, agreed and brought his date over to Joltin’ Giuseppe’s table where a
brief conversation ensued. Just a casual dinner with Ralph Kiner and Joe DiMaggio...
not exactly your typical Friday night.
After hearing that, my brain was pretty much on the verge of exploding. Anything she said from that point forward was completely lost on me.
After hearing that, my brain was pretty much on the verge of exploding. Anything she said from that point forward was completely lost on me.
Yesterday, Ralph Kiner passed away from natural causes at 91 years old. Now it's my generation's turn to tell stories of the Ralph Kiner we knew to keep his memory alive; just like he kept the memories alive of so many others.
