Ralph's speech upon being inducted into the Hall of Fame. It's filled with stories that are fascinating and obscure and rich and textured, but often wonderfully elusive in point. In other words, it's totally Ralph Kiner. "Judy," I surmise, is Judy Johnson, inducted in the same year. Not quite sure who "John" is. Ralph was a great Hall of Famer. He was a great lot of things, just by being Ralph. Thank you, commissioner, and thank you out there. I know, Judy, you don�t make this too easy, you know. You�re a hard act to follow. I want to say something in rebuttal to John Carmichael, who was up here at the beginning of the program, and I resent the remarks that he said about Hank Sauer and me, I don�t deny them, I just resent them. But John, it�s not true that we shortened Baumholtz�s career three years, it really isn�t. I will tell you a true story. I just thought of it when John was up here. It happened, a lady was sitting next to a good friend of mine in the stands at Wrigley Field, and she was a Baumholtz fan. If you have ever been to Wrigley Field, any ball hit down the right field or left field foul line, there�s a gutter out in the outfield. And if it gets in that gutter it kind of bounces down. It doesn�t bounce off the wall, so it�s sometimes very difficult. It so happened that day I was playing left field and there were several balls hit down in the left field corner and they got in that gutter, and this gal kept saying, �Throw it to third, Ralphie, throw it to third.� Meaning it should have been a double, but I played it into a triple. So she was doing this throughout the game, and finally near the end of the game a fly ball went out to center field and she yelled, �Oh, Frankie will get it, Frankie will get it.� And then all of a sudden she said, �Oh my God, he dropped it.� Which he did. I want to thank, first of all, the sportswriters who were so kind to me throughout my career and did so much for me publicly-wise. And of course, I especially want to thank Jack Lang, who is the secretary of the sportswriters� association. He�s the fellow that counted the votes. Going back to my early days, I have to mention a fellow by the name of Bob Boken, who is the man who got me started playing baseball. And his son was about four years older than I, and he used to pitch to his son across the street and I�d go out in the outfield and shag the balls. This went on for about a year and I finally got a chance to bat, and I realized what a great game this was. I also want to thank a fellow named Harry Johnson, who played minor league baseball. I went to school with his son and the two of us played high school ball together. And Harry Johnson used to haul us all around in the LA area taking us to play semi-pro ball games. I have to thank Dan Crowley, who was manager of a team I played for, which was the Yankee Juniors. I played three years for a New York team, for the New York Yankee team sponsored out in LA. Later on, signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates and signed up with Hollis Thurston, and the reason why Hollis signed me was, he said you could get to the major leagues a lot quicker with the Pittsburgh Pirates than you could with the New York Yankees. I also have to mention Specs Toporcer, who was my first minor league manager. He was a fellow that fined us five dollars if we ever got caught eating hot dogs. Maybe he was right. Burleigh Grimes, who was my second minor league manager. Burleigh, of course, is in the Hall of Fame up here. And one thing I remember more about Burleigh Grimes than anybody else is the fact that he had an individual set of signs for every ballplayer on the club. Now, that�s really difficult, not so much for the ballplayer, but for the manager to remember each set of signs. Later on, when I got to Pittsburgh, they had very simple signs. The hit sign was like this. The steal sign was like this. But he did teach me the nicer things about it. And then again, another great Hall of Famer, Frankie Frisch, who was my first major league manager. I also have to mention my mother and my father. My mother is 93 and living. I don�t know whether she�s 93 or 92. She lies about her age. She never believed I would make it to the major leagues. In fact, when I was a young kid I had to work for a living, going through the Depression years, going back there, and I had a magazine route and I delivered Liberty magazines and had to sell them door to door. They cost five cents apiece and I got a penny out of it. And I had to do this in the afternoons after school. But I wanted to be a baseball player and I figured if I could figure some way to get four times 20, or 80 cents, I could pay for the magazines and forget about the penny on the magazine I was going to make, and I could play baseball. So, I buried the magazines in the back yard and I went out and mowed lawns, two or three lawns on Saturday so I could get enough money to pay for the magazines. And this was very fine. It worked out perfectly until one day my mother found the magazines in the back yard and she sent me to military school. My father died when I was four, and he didn�t get a chance, of course, to really have any influence in my life. The only thing about heredity is the fact that he was such a bad ballplayer he couldn�t even play on the semi-pro teams in Santa Rita, New Mexico. But he was honest and they used to let him hold the money on the teams that they bet. So, that goes back there, I guess. But if you remember my major league career, I had the unfortunate experience of playing with some losing teams. To give you an example of what kind of team we had at Pittsburgh when I was playing there, Joe Garagiola was our catcher. We were playing the Brooklyn Dodgers one time in Ebbets Field and Roy Campanella was the catcher. We had a fellow named Dick Hall, �Turkey Neck� Hall, who later on became quite a pitcher with Pittsburgh. He was a third baseman. In fact, the first time he played third in his whole life was the opening day of the 1952 season. After the game was over and he had bobbled about five balls down there, in the clubhouse George Metkovich, who was a very close friend of mine, was dressing next to him, said to him as he was taking off his baseball shirt, he said, �What�s that thing pinned on your undershirt?� And he said, �That�s my fraternity pin.� And George said to him, he said, �If you don�t get that thing off of there it�s going to be pinned to you the rest of your life the way you play third.� But anyway, this one occasion he was on first base and the manager gave the sign to steal and Roy had the signs that we� the Pittsburgh signs. So he pitched out and the runner didn�t go. So now the sign was given again and again. Roy pitched out, and the runner didn�t go. So, three times he pitched out and three times the runner didn�t go. So after the inning was over, they brought Dick Hall into the a� �Turkey Neck� Hall, into the dugout and said, �Did you get the steal sign?� He said, �Yeah, I got the steal sign.� He said, �Why didn�t you go?� He said, �I didn�t think you meant it.� Remember that, Roy? Of course, playing with losing ball clubs has some drawbacks, there�s no doubt about it. In 1952, I hit 37 home runs and Branch Rickey wanted to cut me. In fact, he cut my salary 25 percent, the maximum cut. And I said, �But I hit 37 home runs, how can you cut me?� He said, �We could have finished last without you.� Well, I did get Stan Musial some extra money. I signed my contract one year, and I got a total of $90,000 to sign. We were drawing a lot of people in the ball park at that time. And Stan went to his owner and he said, �Look, I�m a better ballplayer than Kiner. I want more money than he got.� So, they gave him $91,000. About two weeks later they called him in and said, �Wait a minute, you are a better ball player than Kiner and we think you ought to be the first $100,000 ball player in the National League.� So he got $100,000. I�m still trying to get my ten percent. One of the incidents, I�m a little like you Billy, I can�t remember any real exciting moments as a ballplayer other than the fact that everyday play was always exciting. But one thing, one true thing, happened to me one time back in the early days with Pittsburgh. I got an extortion letter. I didn�t think I�d played left field that bad, but I got an extortion letter and it said you had to get so much money and put it in a certain place, and I�ll spare you the details. The whole story is like this: they said if I didn�t do this I�d be shot playing left field and it was on a Sunday, it was around the Fourth of July, and, of course, there were a lot of firecrackers going off, which didn�t help the situation any. And George Metkovich was the center fielder and the game started at one o�clock, and in those days they had a curfew of seven o�clock in Pennsylvania. And so the game got over, the doubleheader was over at seven, and we got inside and I sat down and George came up to me and he said, �You know, I�m really glad this day is over.� And I said, �George, that�s really nice of you to worry about me getting shot out there in left field.� He said, �Worry about you? Not you.� I said, �What do you mean?� He said �What�s your number?� I said, �My number�s 4.� �Well,� he said, �my number�s 44. What if that guy had double vision?� I hear in the background, what about Albany? I started playing baseball in Albany in 1941 and while I�m at it, I�d like to�that was the beginning of my career and I really enjoyed it. I played there two years, in 1941 and 1942. I�d like to introduce at this time my first real close friend in baseball and my roommate at Albany, Jimmy Cullinane. Jimmy, will you stand up for a minute, please. There he is, right here. Jimmy taught me how to drink beer. I have one other story that I�d like to tell you, and show you what baseball can do for you. You get to meet so many great people, and Bing Crosby was an owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and he bought in the ball club in 1947 when Hank Greenberg joined Pittsburgh, and got involved with the situation over there when Billy Herman was our manager. And he said one time, I went out to see him - he was making a picture, and I went out to see him in Hollywood, and he said, �How would you like to go out with Elizabeth Taylor?� I didn�t take long to answer. And so it was arranged, and I went out with Elizabeth Taylor. I picked her up at her house and we went to see a premiere, in Hollywood, at Grauman�s Chinese Theatre, with all the searchlights and the people in the bleachers, something like right here all around. We got there late. We were the last ones really to get in the theater and I drove up, left my car in front. And the attendant took the car and we went in and saw the picture and came out. And now, as we were coming out after the picture was over, of course, there was all this mass confusion and I heard this fellow with the P.A. system saying, �Mr. Cary Grant�s car, please.� A few minutes later, Mr. Grant�s car would come up and he�d get in with his date, or whoever he had, and go. �Mr. Gary Cooper�s car,� and this went on, so I went up and said, �Will you please page my car, my name is Ralph Kiner.� So, he paged the car and nothing happened. We were standing there, things are getting a little loose now, and I�m getting a little nervous. And I went up to him again and said, �Would you page Ralph Kiner�s car again?� And he did again, and again nothing happened, no car showed up. And now, we�re just about the last people there and it�s getting to be really embarrassing, and I went up one more time and I said, �Would you page my car, I�m Ralph Kiner.� �Yes, I know Mr. Kiner, I did page, but your chauffeur must have gone to sleep.� I said, �Chauffeur, I don�t have any chauffeur.� He said, �In that case your car is two blocks over there.� I would like to�really this is easy, I wrote it down. I would like to have you meet my wife, Barbara, who is here. Her mother, Mrs. Gladys Batchelder. My son, Mike, is not here. He is playing ball at Wausau. He�s in the professional baseball racket. He would love to have been here, but he, I thought so too, he�d better stick around so he could get in the lineup and get a chance to play. I have another son that�s in Alaska, and he couldn�t quite make it. He�s going to school up at the University of Alaska. My oldest daughter, Kasey. Casey Stengel always thought we name Kasey after him, but it really isn�t true, she spells her name with a �K.� My other, my second daughter, Tracie. My third daughter, Kim. Also, I�d like to have you meet my high school coach who came all the way from California for this occasion, Bob Purcell. Along with him, a fellow who has been a great fan of mine and really campaigned for me to get in the Hall of Fame, did so much work and I really appreciate all he did, John Crispins. I know that Mrs. Weiss, Hazel Weiss, has been introduced earlier. Hazel, I�m really happy to see you here. George Weiss, her husband, of course, gave me my first shot at the broadcasting of the New York Mets, which started me on another very happy career. Also, my friends from St. Petersburg who came up here all the way from St. Petersburg. And, of course, my friends from the Mets are here. And I�d like to introduce some close friends of mine, Mr. and Mrs. Al Dowd, Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Berry. And the publisher of the St. Petersburg Times, very close friend of mine, Mr. and Mrs.� I forgot his name�Jack Lake. I do want you to know this is really a tremendous thrill for me and I really, it�s hard to put it in perspective. And I guess about the best analogy that I could think of would be the fact that it�s almost like, after years and years of hard work to become a doctor, say seven years or whatever it might take, you finally get a stamp of approval, an MD after your name. And the fact that I have HOF after my name really makes it all so wonderful and all so worthwhile. It�s a tremendous thrill and a tremendous honor, and I want to thank all of you who are here today and all of you who couldn�t make it, and it�s just a great pleasure. Thank you.
