{"id":39669,"date":"2014-02-07T06:00:04","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T11:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=39669"},"modified":"2014-02-07T08:15:40","modified_gmt":"2014-02-07T13:15:40","slug":"another-hall-of-famer-passes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=39669","title":{"rendered":"Another Hall-of-Famer Passes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ralph Kiner <a href=\"http:\/\/sportsillustrated.cnn.com\/mlb\/news\/20140206\/ralph-kiner-obituary-hoffer\/\">passed away the yesterday<\/a>.\u00a0 He was 91.<\/p>\n<p>Kiner was a longtime broadcaster for the New York Mets \u2013 for over 50 years, actually.\u00a0 He was noted for his baseball malaprops, and for \u201cKiner\u2019s Corner\u201d \u2013 an area near the leftfield corner of Shea Stadium where Kiner held his post-game show.<\/p>\n<p>But Kiner should be remembered for more.\u00a0 He was a legitimate Hall of Famer based on his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/k\/kinerra01.shtml\">performance on the diamond<\/a>.\u00a0 His career was cut short \u2013 10 seasons, the bare minimum for HOF consideration \u2013 due to chronic back issues.\u00a0 Yet at the time he retired, he was 6th on the all-time home run list with 369 \u2013 and had hit 329 in his first 8 seasons, leading his league 7 times and both leagues 6 times.<\/p>\n<p>Kiner\u2019s career slugging percentage was nearly .550 (.548), and his career on-base percentage was nearly .400 (.398).\u00a0 He had over 1450 hits, over 1000 RBIs, and over 1000 walks during his career.\u00a0 Though his election took until his last year of eligibility, Kiner was a legitimate HOFer.\u00a0 Had his career not been cut short by injury we might be talking about him in the same breath as other legendary baseball power hitters like Mantle, Ruth, Mays, Williams, and Aaron.<\/p>\n<p>Kiner played mostly for the Pittsburgh Pirates.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t good enough during his playing days to make the World Series.\u00a0 Had they done so, or had Kiner played mostly in NY or Chicago \u2013 we\u2019d likely remember more about his career.<\/p>\n<p>Why post this here?\u00a0 Because Kiner\u2019s MLB career spanned the immediate post-World War II years:\u00a0 1946-1955.\u00a0 It began a bit late for that era, at age 22.<\/p>\n<p>It began late because prior to 1946 he was otherwise occupied.\u00a0 Kiner was a US Navy pilot during World War II.\u00a0 He flew ASW missions in the Pacific theater.<\/p>\n<p>Baseball historian Marty Noble has called Kiner <a href=\"http:\/\/mlb.mlb.com\/news\/article\/mlb\/baseball-hall-of-famer-ralph-kiner-dies-at-91?ymd=20140206&amp;content_id=67508988&amp;vkey=news_mlb\">&#8220;one of baseball&#8217;s genuine and most charming gentlemen&#8221;<\/a>.\u00a0 That\u2019s a fine tribute to a truly fine man \u2013 and for 10 years, a truly great player.<\/p>\n<p>Rest in peace, Mr. Kiner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ralph Kiner passed away the yesterday.\u00a0 He was 91. Kiner was a longtime broadcaster for the &hellip; <a title=\"Another Hall-of-Famer Passes\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=39669\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Another Hall-of-Famer Passes<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[215,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball","category-blue-skies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}