Kiner's Krushing Klouts

In the 1947 APBA baseball replay I’m a little over halfway through, Pittsburgh Pirates left fielder Ralph Kiner is Krushing the ball. At the All-Star break, he’s got 31 home runs and leads his closest competitor Johnny Mize of the New York Giants by 10 Klouts. He’s on pace to hit 57 home runs if he keeps up the pace.

It’s one of the more powerful displays of batting I’ve ever had in a replay. My first “replay” was the 1998 baseball season with steroid-loaded Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. I didn’t really consider it a replay, however. I played games with the 1999 schedule and, rather realizing it was a replay of a previous season, I treated it more like the current season. The following replay was the 1957 season in which the obsession for doing these full replays took over. I learned a lot about that season while rolling its games and have done so ever since for whatever season I’m doing.

I think McGwire hit something insane like 68 or 70 home runs in that 1998 replay. The most homers I've had by a player since were 53 by Oakland’s Jose Canseco in a 1991 replay. That, apparently, was also aided by steroids.

So, Kiner comes by it naturally. But while people always recalled Kiner as a slugger, he was a decent batter. Kiner's lifetime average in 10 seasons was .279, but that was somewhat lessened by his final two seasons when he played with a back injury.

In the Pirates' past 11 games in my 1947 replay, Kiner’s second season, he batted .425. He hit safely in 10 of the 11 games and had six home runs and drove in 16 runs. For the season so far, along with his 31 homers, he has 83 RBIs. In the actual season, Kiner had 21 home runs and 60 RBIs after playing 83 games (since I don’t have games rained out in my replays, teams play a full schedule and Pittsburgh’s 83^rd game came 12 days before the Pirates’ real 83^rd game). Mize, during the same 11 games, hit only one home run and had six RBIs. He did bat .357, during that stretch, though, and the two add to the enjoyment of this replay. Their ‘rivalry’ is similar to that of the one between Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio in the American League.

Kiner is in the Hall of Fame, but just barely. He was voted into the Hall in 1975, his last year of eligibility, by one vote more than the 75 percent required. He led or was tied for the home run lead for seven consecutive seasons from 1946 to 1952. He ended up with 369 homers. He was aided in that total, in part, when Pirates’ owners built a bullpen in the left field at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, cutting the distance to the seats from 406 feet to 376 feet. Kiner also played with Hank Greenberg on that 1947 team and he called the veteran first baseman the most influential person in his career.

The Pirates were cellar-dwellers during Kiner’s career. In my replay, the 1947 Bucs are 28-56 now (I played one game after the All-Star break) and are 28.5 games behind National League leader Brooklyn. Kiner earned $90,000 in 1952, his highest salary. After a less-than-stellar batting average that season, team owner Branch Rickey cut Kiner’s salary to $75,000. When Kiner complained, Rickey is credited as saying “Son, we can finish last without you.”

Kiner was traded to the Chicago Cubs during the 1953 season and then was reunited with his pal Greenberg in Cleveland in 1955 where he played one season before retiring.

Kiner was friends with Bing Crosby, who was an owner of the Pirates back then, and that union led Kiner into the Hollywood circle. He took a 17-year-old Elizabeth Taylor to a movie premier and hung out with Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball. He built a huge home in Palm Springs, Calif., and lived the life of luxury. 

After retiring, he joined the expansion team New York Mets as an announcer in 1962. He quipped that the Mets hired Kiner because he had “a lot of experience losing.” He was also known for his Casey Stengel-like sayings. He once said that Don Sutton “lost 13 games in a row without winning a ballgame” and “All of the Mets’ road wins against Los Angeles this year have been at Dodger Stadium.” He even poked at Stengel once, referencing him during a badly-played Mets’ game. “If Casey Stengel were alive today, he’d be spinning in his grave,” Kiner said.

Kiner died on Feb. 6, 2014. He was the reason I began a replay of the 1950 season in March 2014 rather than tackle the 1991 season I had planned.  Kiner hit a home run in the first game I played with him and the Pirates and he ended my replay season with a National League leading 46 home runs. In his actual 1950 season, Kiner hit 47.

Ralph Kiner's 1947 APBA card

To me, this is one of the major draws of doing an APBA replay. You learn about the players and “see” them in action. Whenever Kiner’s up to bat, I watch the dice closely to see if he rolls a “66” or "11" and another Klout is on its way.