Ralph Kiner, Mets broadcasting legend and Hall of Fame Pirates player, dead at ...

Ron Antonelli

Ralph Kiner, Hall-of-Fame slugger with the Pittsburgh Pirates in the '40s and '50s who became a New York institution in his second, equally-distinguished broadcasting career with the Mets for over 40 years, died Thursday, He was 91.

It is hard to imagine anyone having lived a more dream life than Kiner, who grew up in Alhambra, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles, fulfilled his childhood ambition of being a major league baseball player, won a record seven straight National League home run titles to get himself elected to the Hall of Fame and, along the way, was golfing pals with Hollywood legends Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope and Jack Benny, dated movie stars Janet Leigh and Elizabeth Taylor, and, finally, became one of the most beloved New York sports figures as Mets broadcaster from their 1962 inception until 2006 when he finally had his workload reduced to cameo TV appearances.

As he said in his 1987 autobiography 'Kiner's Korner' with Newsday columnist Joe Gergen: 'I've been a very fortunate man. My earliest desires to be a major league ballplayer were satisfied and the second half of my life has been even more thrilling than the first.'

Still, Kiner's early life was one of hardship. Born Oct. 27, 1922 in Santa Rita, N.M., he was only four years old when his father died and his mother moved them to Alhambra where she took a job as an office nurse for an insurance company making $125 a month. Although he was obsessed with baseball - he'd spend hours practicing his batting in the basement of their small house - at his mother's insistence, Kiner got a job selling the Saturday Evening Post door-to-door after school. As a high school senior, he was named all-Southern California outfielder, drawing attention from a slew of major league scouts. He wound up signing with the Pirates for a $3,000 bonus which his mother used to pay off the mortgage on their house.

After spending the first two years of his pro career, 1941-42 with Albany of the Eastern League, Kiner was promoted to Triple A Toronto for 1943 but joined the Navy Air Force halfway through the season. After being discharged with the end of World War II in 1945, Kiner made the Pirates out of spring training in 1946 and won the NL homer title with 23 his rookie season. A six-time NL All-Star, he would go on to lead or tie for the lead in homers the next six seasons with 51, 40, 54, 47, 42 and 37 respectively. During that span, he had had six seasons of 100 or more RBI, including an NL-leading 127 with his career-high 54 homers in 1949.

Kiner always credited Hank Greenberg, the equally renowned home run hitter who hit 58 for the Detroit Tigers in 1938, as having most influenced his career. Greenberg was acquired by the Pirates in 1947 specifically to tutor Kiner, but besides working with him on his hitting, Greenberg also cautioned Kiner about his partying ways while ingraining in him the value of hard work. In becoming the most prolific power hitter in baseball, Kiner was credited with having coined the phrase 'home run hitters drive Cadilacs' although he later confessed the quote was actually attributed to him by a '40s Pirate teammate, lefthanded pitcher Fritz Ostermueller.

Unfortunately, during those first seven years in the big leagues, Kiner's Pirates finished last or next-to-last five times while finishing over .500 only once, prompting what has become one of the most famous lines ever uttered by a baseball executive. It was after the 1952 season, in which Kiner had won his seventh straight home run title, that Pirates GM Branch Rickey nevertheless offered to cut his major league high salary of $90,000 some 22% to $70,000. When Kiner protested, Rickey replied: 'Son, we could have finished last without you.'

Sure enough, on June 4, 1953, Rickey fulfilled that vow by sending Kiner, along with pitcher Howie Pollet and catcher Joe Garagiola to the Chicago Cubs as the principals in a blockbuster 10-player trade in which the Pirates got back really only one established player, outfielder Gene Hermanski, but, more importantly to their notoriously tight-fisted GM, a reported $100,000 in cash. By then, Kiner had begun to show the strains of a sciatic condition in his back that would eventually lead to his premature retirement, at 33, after the 1955 season with the Cleveland Indians. As result of the back problem, he was slowed in the field and his defense suffered, which, along with his abbreviated career, was blamed for his belated election to the Hall of Fame in 1975, in his 15th and final year on the Baseball Writers ballot.

He played only 10 seasons in the majors, the minimum requirement for Hall-of-Fame consideration, but hit 369 homers, with 1,015 RBI and a .279 career average. As it was, he gained the necessary 75% for election to the Hall by just two votes.

Critics of Kiner as a player attributed his election to the fact that he had gone on to establish himself as a broadcaster in the high visibility media market of New York, which also had the largest bloc of Hall-of-Fame voters. He was hired in 1962, along with Lindsey Nelson and Bob Murphy to do both the Mets radio and TV broadcasting and that trio remained together for 17 years - a record. Kiner earned his niche as a master storyteller and student of the game and his 'Kiner's Korner' postgame show, in which he interviewed the star of the game, became a New York TV baseball staple for four decades.

But along with his unparalleled in-game storytelling ability, Kiner's broadcasting career will also be remembered for his numerous unintentionally comical malaprops. Among them:

'All his saves have come in relief appearances.'

'On Father's Day, we again wish you all a Happy Birthday.'

'The Mets have gotten their leadoff hitter on only once this inning.'

'There's a lot of heredity in that family.'

'Now coming to bat for the Mets, Gary Cooper.'

'We'll be back after this word from Manufacturers Hangover.'

'That's the great thing about baseball, you never know what's going on.'

His most famous line, which was not a malaprop, regarded Philadelphia Phillies' defensively gifted center fielder, Garry Maddox in which he said: 'Two-thirds of the earth is covered by water. The other third is covered by Garry Maddox.'

Along with his fourth wife, Ann, Kiner is survived by two sons, Michael and Scott, and a daughter, Kathryn Freeman, all by his first wife, 1950s tennis star Nancy Chaffee, who died in 2002.