Hello all!
Up on the blog, we add slugger
Ralph Kiner to my 1950 Drake's baseball "extension set", filling out the
great oddball issue with HOFers that missed out the first time around:
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I produced this custom set a couple of years ago in special deluxe packaging, and it came out just the way I envisioned it!
As for Kiner, imagine averaging 97 runs, 37 homers and 101 runs batted in over your ENTIRE career?! Just awesome.
Kiner broke in with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1946
and promptly led the National League in homers with 23, then proceeded
to lead his league in that same department for the next six years, with
FIVE of those seasons with 40 or more, all
consecutively.
In 1947 he smashed 51 homers, then topped himself two years later
when he outright demolished the ball, hitting 54 home runs while setting
his personal best in slugging with a .658 mark
In his 10 short years as a Major League player he led the league 17 times in a positive offensive category.
All
told, he finished with 369 homers, 1015 RBIs, 971 runs scored and a
.279 average over 10 seasons, playing in only 1472 games with 5205
at-bats.
Injuries curtailed what could have been a monster career, but he
produced plenty enough for the BBWA to induct him in 1975, cementing his
place in baseball history, and he was already entrenched as the
long-time New York Mets TV announcer, where he even
copped an Emmy Award and kept us all in stitches with malapropisms for
over 50 years.