MLB

My time with Ralph Kiner, one of the best storytellers there was

Tim McCarver worked alongside Ralph Kiner on Mets television broadcasts for 16 years, from 1983 to 1998. Here, he tells Post readers some of his favorite stories and memories about Kiner, who died on Thursday at age 91. As told to Mark Hale.

We kidded all the time about how he forgot my name one night. We were live and he said, “I’m Ralph Kiner along with …” and he looked at me and he couldn’t come up with it. And believe me, I was pulling for him. He looked at me and he said, “What is your name?” I almost fell backwards off my perch. But he turned these things into jewels.

One night, he did the first three innings, and he was going to introduce me to do the play-by-play in the top of the fourth. He said, “And the Mets on top 3-1” — or something like that — “and now I’d like to turn the play-by-play over to my partner Tim McArthur.” I said “McCarver.” He said, “What’d I say?” I said, “You said McArthur. You were probably thinking about the general.” And then we talked a little bit about the general.

The Mets got blown out, and at the end of the game I said, “Ralph, earlier in the telecast we talked about General MacArthur, and one of his lines was, ‘Chance favors the prepared man,’ and obviously the Mets weren’t prepared tonight.” And Ralph turns toward the camera and says, “MacArthur also said, ‘I shall return,’ and we’ll be back right after this.” It’s perfect! How do you top that? It was wonderful.

Another time, Ralph and I were doing our notes one night before a game and a guy comes in whose name I should have known, but I didn’t. So I sat there and pretended that I knew who he was for three minutes. We have all been there. Ralph said, “You know what I do in those situations? I say, ‘There he is!’ ” The next night I come into the booth and Ralph is working on his notes, and looking up at me, Ralph said, “There he is!” Twenty-four hours and my name was up in smoke.

Ralph was such a marvelous storyteller that in the transition of talking about his life you become a storyteller yourself. You become a better raconteur because he was in my mind one of the great raconteurs that I’ve ever been around.

When you’re in the television business for a long time, you know whether you sold what you said to the listening audience. You can almost feel the audience groaning or laughing, and you can also feel the audience when they’re rolling their eyes and going, “Oh, no, not again.”

But Ralph never had that. You never got the feeling of “Oh, no, not another story about this or not another story about that.” He could make the same story fresh 20 times during a season. And that’s a rare talent.

He was a perfect gentleman. Before the game, after the game, traveling, eating. He loved good food. He loved good wine. He was just a thoroughly polished man.

He was born in New Mexico, grew up in Southern California. He had a very, very high regard for his mother. He used to talk about his mom in very sweet tones. What he had to say about his mother was always very nice, but for the most part he grew up without a father figure. And I found that very interesting for a man as polished as Ralph. What Ralph learned was how to treat people, and he evidently learned that at an early age because he was across the board nice to everybody.

During the ’80s and the early ’90s, the Mets were THE topic of baseball fans in New York City. And Ralph certainly added to that and in many ways was a big reason why that was the case.

In those days, WWOR was a superstation, of course. And we went to Southern California, and we went to the Midwest and everything. We had a huge audience because of all the transplanted New Yorkers that were in Southern California or the Midwest. When we were in Los Angeles, it was nothing for George Carlin to come into the booth and say hi to Ralph. Or Chuck Connors. They were friends of Ralph. He had many, many friends in Southern California because he was from there and lived in Palm Springs from 1951 until now. It just gave you an idea of his connection not only in NYC, but his relationships in southern California, too. They were classic connections.

His universal love was something to behold, and with Ralph’s passing, baseball has lost its best generational connection.