Phil Mushnick

Phil Mushnick

MLB

Unique calls were Ralph Kiner’s Korner-stone

Before I would have you remember what you already know — Ralph Kiner as an engaging raconteur, free-range language wrangler and mangler, and original voice of the Mets — I would urge you to consider that he may have been the most underrated superstar in baseball history.

The Baseball Encyclopedia presents players’ annual stats in bold type for having led their league. Kiner’s listings — a mere 10-year-career ended by a bad back — showed him covered in boldly typed ink. Do yourself right and look him up. He was spectacular.

And here’s the most significant thing: He played on horrible Pirates teams. Other than one season when he was protected in the lineup by his close friend, mentor and ex-Tigers star Hank Greenberg, and then by Wally Westlake, a career .272 hitter with decent power, pitching around Kiner was requisite.

Also remarkably, he was a rare slugger in that he didn’t strike out much. He did his rookie season, 1946 — a bold-typed 109 times — but then never close to that again. In 1949, the year he led the NL with 54 HRs, 127 RBIs and 117 walks in 152 games, he struck out only 61 times. Imagine.

I went to college near Pittsburgh, and any time I was around the fathers of my friends from those western Pennsylvania coal and steel towns, I asked about Kiner. Almost invariably, they told how Forbes Field would empty, be it the seventh, eighth or ninth inning, after what was presumed to be Kiner’s last at bat.

But then there were those years I didn’t have to ask about, when Kiner, Lindsey Nelson and Bob Murphy on radio and Ch. 9, provided alternative baseball — National League baseball — to the Yankees on radio and Ch. 11. Heck, with the teams having switched broadcast stations, I still can’t shake the habit.

“Kiner’s Korner,” Ch. 9’s postgame show, more times than not co-starred a Mets opponent, given that the Mets, more times than not, had lost. And that show developed a cult-like following, driven by Kiner’s effortless capacity to just get through it, then get the heck out. It was an absolute howl.

For years, it was sponsored by Martin Paints, Manufacturer’s Hanover Trust or “your tri-State Lincoln-Mercury dealers.” They all got their money’s worth.

Say, “Kiner’s Korner” was sponsored by Martin Paints and his guest was Phillies manager Gene Mauch. At the turn, Kiner would read a Martin Paints ad, then return us to his show by reintroducing his guest, “Phillies manager Gene Martin.”

Kiner preferred to watch and call ballgames, not to take them apart, dissect them, perform autopsies on them. He wasn’t a homer, he was an observer, a cigar-blowing favorite uncle who could be reminded of someone or something he would be moved to talk about by any ground ball down either line.

He didn’t lean on stats, which is why, after a Mets win in 1986, he explained why Jesse Orosco was not credited with a save:

“Because he did not have, he did not pitch three innings, and he came in with, ah, out the ah, on deck batter being a hitter that he would not face in, ah, his next approach to pitching to the hitter.”

You bet Kiner influenced my disdain for the save stat.

It’s impossible to say goodbye to Kiner without recalling his most important TV partner.

Kiner and Tim McCarver introduce what would become the Mets’ division-clinching win in 1986.WOR-TV

With Lindsey Nelson gone to San Francisco to call Giants games, and Bob Murphy sent exclusively to radio, Kiner, in 1982, was stuck with the late Lorn Brown, an earnest fellow, but one who, with the bases loaded in a tie game, would tell us that the batter, in 1977, led the Pacific Coast League in doubles.

There were times, I swear, when Kiner napped to Brown’s soporifics.

But in 1983, a broadcasting plebe, Tim McCarver, was pulled from the Phillies’ booth. Between 1983-98, when McCarver was pushed out — he became a Yankees TV analyst the next season — he re-energized Kiner. Kiner had the cheekiness restored to his color. Together, they became at least as good as any good game they called.

And Kiner, his speech impaired, but alert until the end, never quit on us.