Kiner remembers good old days

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

By BEN WALKER
ASSOCIATED PRESS

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- Ralph Kiner shook hands with Babe Ruth, talked with Ty Cobb and hit a home run off Satchel Paige.

Great names of the game, all gone.


"I miss the guys, the old guys," Kiner said.

Now 84, the Hall of Fame slugger-turned-broadcaster keeps busy. Dressed neatly in a suit jacket and sunglasses, he was at Tradition Field on Monday to work a few innings of the exhibition between the Indians and Mets.

To spend any time around Kiner is to open a Who's Who of Cooperstown. Other announcers can rattle off statistics, but who else can tell stories involving 19th-century star Cap Anson, Rogers Hornsby and Rube Marquard?



Don't hear much about them these days. Funny thing, there was a trivia question posted on the scoreboard Monday, and Tris Speaker was one of the potential answers. Speaker, a star way back in the deadball era, was one of Kiner's coaches.

"Taught me a lot about playing the outfield," Kiner said.

Kiner has recovered nicely from a stroke several years ago that impaired his speech, and recently had dinner with Yogi Berra. He remains good friends with Stan Musial and occasionally sees Bob Feller. He only wishes a few more faces were still around.

Dizzy Dean, Ted Williams and Casey Stengel, those were his pals.

"We were like a club back then. We all knew each other," he said. "I think we had more fun.

"Now, everything is so ferocious because the money is so tremendous."

"Those stories about Ted Williams and Tom Yawkey shooting pigeons at Fenway, you think they could do that now?" he asked.

Sitting on the Mets' bench, Kiner laughed at the thought. As if on cue, Mets sensation Jose Reyes happened to walk into the dugout, singing loudly in Spanish and shaking his hips.

A lot of fans know Kiner as a broadcaster far more than as a player, from his time with Lindsey Nelson and Bob Murphy to the postgame show that made him so popular, fittingly called "Kiner's Korner."



Many also know him for his malaprops.

There was the line that "On Father's Day, we again wish you all happy birthday." And the comment "all of his saves have come in relief appearances." Plenty more, too.

"When you talk as much as I do, you're going to get some things wrong. I made my share of mistakes, no doubt it," he said.

But Kiner said he had a secret.

"Some of those lines, I said them on purpose. Like the one: 'If Casey were alive today, he'd be spinning in his grave,' " Kiner said. "I just thought it was funny."