1969 Mets: Ralph Kiner Q&A

Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, right, shakes hands with Ralph Kiner during the 1975 Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

 

Ralph Kiner was in his eighth season as a Mets announcer in 1969. Kiner, along with Bob Murphy and Lindsey Nelson, broadcast the Mets their first day as a franchise in 1962. The broadcasters remained together for 17 seasons—a record for a trio with one team—until Nelson moved on to the San Francisco Giants after the 1978 season. Murphy remained with the club, switching to radio full-time in 1982, until he retired following the 2003 season. Kiner still broadcast a few selected Mets games per season in his late 80s (he was born on October 27, 1922, in Santa Rita, New Mexico—the only man elected to Cooperstown as a native of that state). Though Kiner never played for the Mets—he retired at age 32 in 1955 because of a chronic bad back—he is one of the most revered men in franchise history. His beloved postgame show was a staple among Mets fans for two generations. The show was dubbed Kiner’s Korner for the porch in left field at Forbes Field, where he won an unprecedented seven consecutive National League home run titles (including ties in 1947 and 1952). He hit 369 home runs in just a 10-season career with the Pirates, Cubs, and Indians. He was elected to National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1975 and to the Mets Hall of Fame in 1984.

He took time in September 2007, two months after Ralph Kiner Night at Shea Stadium, to talk about the 1969 Mets and how things were handled in the booth.

 

Maple Street Press: In 1968 did you feel there was something changing about the team, or was it something you didn’t really see until 1969?

Ralph Kiner: They had acquired both Koosman and Seaver by then. Ironically, they got them by happenstance. Seaver was originally signed by the Atlanta Braves and he was signed through a technicality. [It was done] illegally and they would not honor the signing. They put his name in a hat and there were three teams trying to get Seaver [in the special lottery set up by commissioner William Eckert in 1966]. One was Philadelphia, the other was Cleveland, and the Mets. And the Mets drew his name out of the hat.

Koosman was also going to be released by the Mets [in the minor leagues], but he owed them some money for a used car and Joe McDonald, who was running the farm system, said, “Let’s keep him around for another month and get our money and then let him go.” He ended up having a good month in the minors, so they didn’t let him go and he stayed with the Mets and of course he was part of that real good pitching staff they had and at that time.

Their idea was that pitching was the way to build a club and that’s basically how they came to have such good pitching. In ’68 they had quite a few shutouts [25, second in the major leagues]. It was an abnormal amount of shutouts for a team that wasn’t winning, but they pitched very well. Then in ’69, they had never been at .500, and in the early part of the year they got to .500 for the first time in their history and they, the writers, celebrated it, but Seaver was quoted as saying, “We’re only .500. They were 10 back on August 13 and the Cubs were dominating the league at the time, but all the things were going right for the Mets. The Mets wound up beating the Cubs and winning 100 games. They were getting all the breaks you need to get to be a winner. Everything has to go right all the way around for a team to win.

MSP: The double shutout, when both pitchers drove in the only runs in 1-0 games in Pittsburgh, was that the strangest doubleheader you’ve ever seen, at least the strangest that didn’t go 30-plus innings?

RK: Cardwell [had one of the RBI hits] and the other was Koosman. Koosman was a hell of a pitcher. He certainly was one of the best competitors the Mets have ever had. He was really an outstanding pitcher along with Tom Seaver. That team also had some really good pitching along with Ron Taylor. Those guys had a real solid ballclub and all those guys had their career years in that year that they won. They beat a really good team in Baltimore. Frank Cashen was GM of Baltimore.

MSP: Do you think that the five-man rotation the Mets developed in 1969 was good for the game or was that something that has led to teams rarely allowing starting pitchers to throw complete games, even when the outcome is crucial?

RK: That became the rule of baseball and I don’t really understand it. I don’t know why you have to go to five-man rotation and not pitch complete games. And Seaver feels the same way. Seaver and Koosman that year, they didn’t take them out automatically when they got to a certain number of pitches.

MSP: Between August 13 and the end of 1969 the Mets had 25 complete games in that span.

RK: Over the years, the Atlanta Braves with Glavine and Smoltz, they pitched all through the game. And Seaver, his pitch count would be up around 150 or whatever. To me, that theory that you don’t throw more than 110 or 120 pitches, I don’t understand that myself. I think the more you use your arm the stronger it gets. Of course that was the way they all pitched at one time in major league baseball. The starters would relieve in between starts on top of that.

MSP: The platoon system, is there something about the way the Mets used that? Gil Hodges used it religiously. Donn Clendenon was the team’s best slugger and he didn’t play at all in the Championship Series in his very strict platoon. Do you think that helped keep the players rested, as opposed to the Cubs, who played the same guys every game?

RK: Credit Stengel with the platoon system. He used it a lot when he managed the Yankees and he himself was platooned a lot when he played for John McGraw [for the 1920s New York Giants]. That system was not brought in by Hodges. He just continued using it when he took over. Might have been passed over from Stengel to him.

I think the platoon system that they use now with the middle relief and the closer is a cop out for the manager. That way at the end of the ballgame if they lose it they can say, “I did it like everyone else and I went to my middleman and he didn’t do the job.” Or it might have been the closer. I don’t really understand the advantage. When I played, we were so happy to get the starting pitcher out of the ballgame because every club had maybe three outstanding pitchers and when you had to go to the bullpen for a pitcher who didn’t have that kind of stuff. The closer does have the ability to throw hard for one or possibly two innings. That could be an advantage, but other than that I know whenever we were hitting against someone like [Warren] Spahn, who had so many complete games it was unbelievable, or good pitchers like that, we were happy to see them get out of the lineup.

MSP: Getting back to 1969, when Agee hit that home run in the upper deck, it was the only one hit there at Shea. You probably had the best view of anyone of that ball.

RK: Agee hit that ball up there. He had outstanding power. He wasn’t that consistent, but he could hit the ball well.

The key to that ’69 team was getting Donn Clendenon on that team. It gave them the right-handed bat that they really needed to score enough runs for that real good pitching staff. All those guys had really good years. You get down to Al Weis, Grote, and all those background guys—they had career years that year.

MSP: In the World Series, especially. Al Weis, who had never hit a home run at Shea Stadium, hits a game-tying home run. Ron Swoboda, under the Hodges platoon, would have normally come out for Art Shamsky, who actually hit more home runs in fewer at bats than Swoboda. But in that particular spot with Eddie Watt on the mound in Game Five, Hodges let Swoboda bat in the eighth inning and he ended up getting the winning hit.

RK: They had one of those years that was unreal. They had everything go their way the second half of that season.

MSP: So during the postseason did you do the broadcast on the radio?

RK: I did the radio broadcast for the network [NBC]. That’s how they did it then. They had the local guys do it for the network. Lindsey did the TV and I did the radio.

MSP: Now the way they would do it, the team’s station broadcasts on the radio with their regular announcers and then there’s a separate national broadcast. But instead of doing that, you guys would just do one broadcast to go all across the country.

RK: Yes.

MSP: Did you, Lindsey, and Bob Murphy have a set rotation during the season where one would do TV, the other do radio, and the third would be off?

RK: We would alternate. All three of us would do TV and radio every single game. I don’t remember how it would break down, but it was something close to that. I would do TV with Bob or Lindsey, then I’d do radio alone.

I know when we originally started, [Mets president] George Weiss said no one is going to be the number one announcer. We were going to be a team of three announcers. There were only three of us and we did all the games on radio and almost all of them on TV.

MSP: That was one thing he told you early on and that was something that really was the case, because you guys really were really quite the team. When Lindsey would go do football and he wouldn’t come back on Sundays, what would you guys do?

RK: I’d do half TV and half radio and Bob would do half TV and half radio. We both worked alone. There was no other announcer involved.

MSP: Did they have it arranged in general so that you’d be available at the end of the game for Kiner’s Korner or would you go right from the booth to the studio?

RK: At the end of the game I’d go right down to the studio and do Kiner’s Korner.

MSP: There was one story of one of the 20-inning games where you had gone down to the studio to get ready for Kiner’s Korner because it looked like the game was going to end, and then it didn’t, so you wound up sitting down in the studio for something like 10 innings.

RK: That was in 1964 when we had the doubleheader that went 7 hours, and 23 minutes. I went down for the second game of the doubleheader that went 23 innings. I went down in the eighth inning and it looked like it was going to be over after nine and it was tied. I started to come back up to relieve either Bob or Lindsey and I never really got back up. There was a triple play in that game and things like that, so I never got back up. I was down there for all the extra innings of the second game of that doubleheader that went 23 innings.

MSP: Was the Kiner’s Korner set big? Sometimes those sets on TV look huge and then when you’re there they’re not much bigger than a broom closet.

RK: It wasn’t bad. [Kiner’s Korner] had two cameras that we used for the interviews and everything and also the working part of the thing was the producer’s room right next to it. But they didn’t use the Kiner’s Korner room for anything but Kiner’s Korner.

One of the things you might want to note is the replays. Originally, and this goes back to 1962, the replays were done in the downtown studios. Those were new to television and the tape machines that they used to do the replays came from downtown. I would indicate what I wanted to be replayed and downtown they would play it back through. Quite a few times they would get the wrong replay up and then we had to ad lib and make the excuses or whatever it was. It was very Mickey Mouse in the very early days of our broadcasts. They really didn’t do replays in those days.

MSP: And what about the graphics?

RK: They were done in production. They did the graphics ahead of time.

MSP: When they do occasionally have a game from a while back on SNY or something like that, one of the first things you notice is how spare the graphics are. They’re not giving you a lot of information. They’re giving you home runs, runs batted in, batting average, and it’s up to the people to pay attention to find out how many outs there are or what the score is. Was that something you noticed over time that changed?

RK: The equipment got much better. They added a lot more cameras. We only used about five cameras, and now they use about 10 or 11. They can set up their graphics on a camera that would not be in use. Because of a lack of cameras, we weren’t able to set up the items you see now that are done and well done.

MSP: One of the things you don’t see so much is the behind the catcher view. That used to be one of the predominant views.

RK: That’s really the director. He might say, “Let’s use the center field camera.” That’s determined by the director and the producer.

MSP: Did you have the same producers throughout?

RK: We had about five different producers. Maybe more. But we had the guy that did the Dodgers games, I think his name was Griffin. The producer was a studio guy. It was too long ago. Bill Webb came out as an assistant and he went on to great fame. He’s still doing the games for us. We had real good production, there’s no question about that.

MSP: Going back to 1969 is there a game you remember the most, or one where you said at the time, “Oh, my Gosh, this is a whole different ballgame from what I’ve been watching”?

RK: We had eight years, really, of tough times with the game. One game I really remember was the game where Seaver pitched the one-hitter where Jimmy Qualls had the only hit of the game. Of course, no one has ever pitched a no-hit game for the Mets.

MSP: One last thing, when you were doing the interviews on Kiner’s Korner, going back to 1969, was there anyone who was especially good interview or especially tough? How about Gil Hodges?

RK: He never gave you a lot of information. But he was a terrific guy, a great guy to be around. I had a good relationship, but he was not a gregarious type guy.

MSP: You got to call the home run that broke your record for home runs by a right-handed batter in the National League when Gil Hodges was playing for the Mets. You had 369 and his last home run was 370. That had to be interesting because you played against him so long.

RK: I played against him his whole career. I probably kept him out of the Hall of Fame because he never led the league in home runs. And if he’d have done that maybe two or three times, he might be in the Hall of Fame.

MSP: Do you think Gil Hodges will ever get in the Hall of Fame?

RK: It’s going to be real tough for him to get in now with the Veteran’s Committee, I’m talking about the Old-Timers.

MSP: You have a vote on that, do you not?

RK: I vote for him. No question about it. I vote for him for the Hall of Fame.