Posted on 02/06/2014 12:46:32 PM PST by Doogle
RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. – The baseball Hall of Fame says slugger Ralph Kiner has died. He was 91.
The Hall says Kiner died Thursday at his home in Rancho Mirage.
Kiner hit 369 home runs during his 10-year career, mostly with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He won or tied for the National League lead in homers in each of his first seven seasons.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
And the worst trade in NY Mets history is trading Nolan Ryan to the Angels for washed up 3rd baseman Jim Fregosi. When Nolan pitched for the Mets and Jerry Grote was the catcher it was an all Texas battery.
Jerry Grote was an exceptional backup catcher!
I remember him well from my childhood, as the announcer for the Mets. I was not a fanatic fan, during the 60’s it was hard not to regard the Mets as jokes, esp next to the fabled Yankees. But this was a guy whose name is synonymous with baseball maybe only a notch below Mantle and Ruth.
Younger people remember him as the Mets broadcaster whereas old fogies like me think first of him as a Pirate.
...I remember him playing for the Indians...very brief...
No he was the starting catcher for the Mets.
He once dated Liz Taylor.
Jerry Grote was an exceptional backup catcher!
...as good as Choo Choo Coleman...?
Disagree. Nolan couldn't handle playing in New York and was thinking of retiring. When he told Gil Hodges that, Gil immediately requested he be traded.
If Nolan stayed in New York he never would have been the pitcher he became and would be long forgotten by now.
The Mets at the time really needed offense, so the Jim Fregosi trade would have been a good deal except for the unfortunate (and all too common in Mets history) freak injury which essentially ended his career.
Too bad most people have forgotten about them because the 1927 version of the Yankees were the best to ever take the field. Even the second place Philadelphia A's team that year had no less than eight future Hall of Famers on their roster.
Modernists may try to argue that later teams performed better than the 1927 Yankees. But later teams didn't have nine inning pitchers and the caliber of opponents like the 1927 A's (in their own league) or 1927 Pirates (in the world series). Not even close.
Damn shame that Kiner and Ernie Banks never got the chance to play in the World Series. But at least Ernie got a lot closer to it than Ralph.
Who was, in turn, a better catcher than Harry Chiti. The first player to be traded for himself as “the player to be named latter”. That’s how bad he was! The 1962 Mets sent him packing.
Better than Choo Choo, who in turn was a better catcher than Derrel Thomas.
...I liked Hobie Landrith myself...also liked the original Mets coaches of Solly Hemus, Cookie Lavagetto, and the great Rogers Hornsby, to say nothing of good ol’ Casey Stengel...
The 1962 Mets sent him packing.
...everything about the ‘62 Mets brings back wonderful memories for me...National League baseball again...
Ryan pitched a mere 2 1/3 inning of relief in his first and only World Series with against Baltimore in 1969 and he was 10-14 with a 3.97 ERA in his last year with the Mets, arguably his best year up until that time. Those were statistics for a journeyman pitcher or middle reliever, not a future Hall of Famer.
Gil Hodges deserves a lot of credit for doing what was best for one of his young players at the time.
Jerry Grote came to my school, for a banquet, in 1970. He was absolutely the biggest jerk I had ever met, in my 12 years, on the planet. They teamed him up with relief pitcher, Ron Taylor (later to become a doctor), who couldn’t have been nicer, to us kids. Before signing an autograph, he asked every kid his name, asked him about his favorite subject in school, and then signed “To my pal, Tom (etc.), your buddy, Ron Taylor”. Grote signed in an illegible scrawl, and any kid that dared speak to him was greeted with a nasty scowl. I hope he reads this, too.
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