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| - Ralph Kiner was a major league baseball player and Hall of Famer.
- Kiner was born in Santa Rita, New Mexico, and grew up in Alhambra, California. He made his major league debut on April 16, 1946 with the Pittsburgh Pirates. In 1947, he gained notice for hitting 51 home runs. Many of Kiner's homers were hit into a shortened left-field and left-center-field porch at Forbes Field, originally built for Hank Greenberg, and known in the press as "Greenberg Gardens"; the porch was retained for Kiner and redubbed by the media as "Kiner's Korner".(Lost Ballparks, Lawrence Ritter, Penguin Books, 1992, p.66-67) Kiner would later use "Kiner's Korner" as the title of his post-game TV show in New York.[1]
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| abstract
| - Ralph Kiner was a major league baseball player and Hall of Famer.
- Kiner was born in Santa Rita, New Mexico, and grew up in Alhambra, California. He made his major league debut on April 16, 1946 with the Pittsburgh Pirates. In 1947, he gained notice for hitting 51 home runs. Many of Kiner's homers were hit into a shortened left-field and left-center-field porch at Forbes Field, originally built for Hank Greenberg, and known in the press as "Greenberg Gardens"; the porch was retained for Kiner and redubbed by the media as "Kiner's Korner".(Lost Ballparks, Lawrence Ritter, Penguin Books, 1992, p.66-67) Kiner would later use "Kiner's Korner" as the title of his post-game TV show in New York.[1] In 1949, Kiner topped his 1947 total with 54 home runs, falling just two short of Hack Wilson's National League record. It was the highest total in the major leagues from 1939 to 1960, and the highest National League total from 1931 to 1997. It made Kiner the first National League player with two fifty-plus seasons. Kiner also matched his peak of 127 RBIs. From 1947 to 1951, Kiner topped 40 home runs and 100 RBIs each season. His string of seasons leading the league in home runs reached seven in 1952, when he hit 37. This was also the last of a record six consecutive seasons in which he led Major League Baseball in home runs, all under the guidance of manager Billy Meyer and Pirate great Honus Wagner. He was selected to participate in the All-Star Game in six straight seasons, 1948 to 1953.[2] He holds (by himself) the major league record of eight home runs in four consecutive games, a mark that he set in September, 1947, one month after he had a record tying streak of 7 home runs in 4 consecutive games. A quote variously attributed to Kiner himself, as well as to teammates talking about Kiner, was "Home run hitters drive Cadillacs and singles hitters drive Fords." [3] Footage of Kiner hitting a homer in Forbes Field can be seen in the 1951 film, Angels in the Outfield. On June 4, 1953, Kiner was sent to the Chicago Cubs as part of a ten player trade. This was largely due to continued salary disputes with Pirate general manager Branch Rickey, who reportedly told Kiner, "We finished last with you, we can finish last without you." (This may be an all-purpose baseball quote, as a similar comment was reportedly made by Casey Stengel in reference to a possible trade of Van Lingle Mungo - The Gospel According to Casey, p.6) Kiner played the rest of the 1953 season and all of 1954 with the Cubs, and finished his career with the Cleveland Indians in 1955; a back injury forced him out of baseball at that point. He retired at the age of 32. At the end of his ten seasons, he had amassed 369 home runs and 1019 runs batted in to go along with a career .279 batting average. Kiner was not known for speed. In contrast to radio's "Quiz Kids" or the 1950 Philadelphia Phillies "Whiz Kids", according to Chicago columnist Mike Royko the 1950s Cubs had an outfield "that was so slow they were known as the Quicksand Kids." Hank Sauer played left field, Frank Baumholtz played center field, and Kiner split his time between left, center and right field. (One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko, University of Chicago, 1999, p.29-31)
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