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Kiner on Spring Training

DocTee Mar 25 2010 11:03 AM

[url]http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/kiner-recalls-spring-training-in-the-40s/ The image of Ralph at Havana nightclubs while guerillas circled the city is quite the contrast to today's norm.

DocTee Mar 25 2010 11:06 AM Re: Kiner on Spring Training

Spring training has changed a lot over the years: nicer facilities for the players and fantasy camps and package tours for the fans. Things were simpler in the old days, so simple that rookies had trouble getting into the batting cage. “When I first went to spring training, in 1941, when I was with the Pirates, I wanted to take batting practice but couldn’t,” Ralph Kiner, the Mets’ longtime announcer said before a game here last week. “A manager wouldn’t go out and put you in there. You had to figure out some way to get in there.” Eventually, Kiner said, Bob Elliott, a veteran teammate and future National League most valuable player, got him some swings in the batting cage. Kiner said it wasn’t a hazing ritual, it was just the way it was. Teams had very few coaches and hundreds of rookies and minor leaguers in camp. “It was an entirely different atmosphere,” Kiner said. Kiner survived his first year in camp and went on to become one of baseball’s most productive home run hitters over his injury-shortened career in the 1940s and 1950s. As Mets fans know, he became a legendary announcer, a walking encyclopedia of baseball history. So it took me no time to get him talking about his other memories of spring training. The Brooklyn Dodgers, he said, had the biggest training camps in Vero Beach, Fla., with hundreds of prospects paid salaries of about $50 a month. If you didn’t make the club, you had to pay your way home, something other clubs also did. “Most guys had to hitchhike home because they didn’t have any money,” Kiner said. “Fortunately, I made the club.” Kiner’s first spring training was in San Bernardino, Calif. He later trained in Miami with the Pirates and Arizona with the Cubs and Indians. In 1953 he and the Pirates also went to Havana for a month. (The Dodgers trained there in the 1940s.) Fidel Castro and his band of rebels were lurking in the hills around the capital, he said, so the Batista government stationed soldiers with machine guns along the highways in case Havana was invaded. Kiner, known as a bon vivant in his day, said that the city “had some of the greatest night clubs that I had ever seen.” Kiner, of course, was present at the Mets’ first spring training, in 1962. On the first day that year, Manager Casey Stengel gathered his players at home plate at Huggins Stengel Field in St. Petersburg, Fla. Stengel told that team that home plate is where you stand when you hit the ball. He then marched the players to first base and told them this was the place they would try to get to a lot during the season. And so on to second base, third base and home again. Because the Mets had some older stars on that team, including Richie Ashburn and Gil Hodges, Kiner had no inkling that the team would lose a record 120 games, shattering the mark set by the Pirates when Kiner was on the club. But the Mets ended up providing Kiner with a great punch line. “I’ve always said that the reason the Mets hired me was because I had losing experience because of that year with the Pirates,” Kiner said.

Frayed Knot Mar 25 2010 12:37 PM Re: Kiner on Spring Training

Maybe that upbringing partially explains why Frank Thomas claimed (here) that Ralph wasn't exactly Mr. Helpful to him when he was a young buck for the Bucs; Ralph was merely doing unto others as he himself had been done unto back in his day.

Ceetar Mar 25 2010 12:42 PM Re: Kiner on Spring Training

“Most guys had to hitchhike home because they didn’t have any money,” Kiner said. “Fortunately, I made the club.” The players union would have a fit today. It's also one of the reasons why tickets are so expensive compared to back then.

Frayed Knot Mar 25 2010 12:46 PM Re: Kiner on Spring Training

[quote="Ceetar":34i30s5u]“Most guys had to hitchhike home because they didn’t have any money,” Kiner said. “Fortunately, I made the club.” The players union would have a fit today. It's also one of the reasons why tickets are so expensive compared to back then.[/quote:34i30s5u] Which is a bit like saying that cars would be so much easier to afford if only we could pay those factory workers $1.25/hr and not give them any of that benefit shit they've come to expect.

Edgy DC Mar 25 2010 12:47 PM Re: Kiner on Spring Training

The players union has little concern for players with a big league contract.

Ashie62 Mar 25 2010 12:58 PM Re: Kiner on Spring Training

The competion for batting practice time reminds me of Roy Hobbs in "The Natural" trying and begging to get some reps.

Nymr83 Mar 25 2010 01:14 PM Re: Kiner on Spring Training

[quote="Ceetar":22c2562f]“Most guys had to hitchhike home because they didn’t have any money,” Kiner said. “Fortunately, I made the club.” The players union would have a fit today. It's also one of the reasons why tickets are so expensive compared to back then.[/quote:22c2562f] the $500,000 minimum salaries and $1 billion dollar stadiums probably have alot more to do with it. [quote="edgy":22c2562f]The players union has little concern for players with a big league contract.[/quote:22c2562f] i assume you mean "without"? the mlbpa, and really any union, shouldnt concern itself with players other than its own members. (minor leaguers needing a union is a seperate issue from who this union is responsible to)

Edgy DC Mar 25 2010 01:15 PM Re: Kiner on Spring Training

Yes, I meant without.