Ralph Kiner

Ralph Kiner is one of those players whose numbers just stop you cold — he led the National League in home runs for seven consecutive seasons from 1946 through 1952, every single year of his first seven in the majors, which is a feat nobody else in baseball history has matched. He did it on some genuinely bad Pittsburgh Pirates teams, which tells you everything: the man could flat-out hit, and opposing pitchers knew it. His career was cut short by a back injury after just ten seasons, but the Hall of Fame voters still came calling in 1975, and rightfully so. And then he reinvented himself entirely as a broadcaster for the New York Mets for over fifty years, becoming beloved in a completely different way — famously mangling names and spinning stories with such warmth that fans adored him for it. He passed away in February 2014 at 91, and baseball genuinely lost a piece of its soul that day.

Name (English)

Ralph Kiner

Name (Japanese)

ラルフ・カイナー

Reading

らるふ・かいなー

Born

October 27, 1922 – February 6, 2014

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Dog

Origin

Santa Rita, New Mexico, United States

Occupation

baseball player

High school

Alhambra High School

Motto

Private

• Official sitehttp://www.ralphkiner.com
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%A9%E3%83%AB%E3%83%95%E3%83%BB%E3%82%AB%E3%82%A4%E3%83%8A%E3%83%BC

Tags

• New Mexico
• baseball player

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.