http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/sports/baseball/18chass.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
musial6
12-20-2007, 06:31 PM
I knew Rickey was sanctimonious--I didn't know he was a slanderer.
I knew Rickey was sanctimonious--I didn't know he was a slanderer.
In 1950 Branch Rickey, the baseball legend who had built dynasties with the St. Louis Cardinals and Brooklyn Dodgers, became the Pirates' general manager, but the club fell to last place.
Kiner clubbed 47 home runs in 1950 (The Sporting News named him Player of the Year), then 42, then 37 in 1952. He led the league each year. His seven consecutive home run titles are a record; not even Ruth did that.
The Pirates' owners signed him to a $90,000 contract for 1951. This outraged Branch Rickey, of whom Kiner would say later, "He was cheap." Many others shared that opinion. Baseball historian Bill James wrote, "Rickey, in one of the oddest moves of his career, [was provoked] to begin systematically destroying Kiner's reputation as a player, so that he could trade him; it's nuts, but that's what he was doing."
In Rickey's papers at the Library of Congress, his biographer, Murray Polner, found a "confidential" letter to owner John Galbreath. Kiner, Rickey wrote, "would not throw or run and could not field and was a self-appraised star and could have no part ever in a pennant-winning club." He complained that Kiner was given special privileges by the manager, demanded "highly expensive" air conditioning in the clubhouse and insisted that his contract include a clause guaranteeing that the shorter fences in Kiner's Korner would stay. Kiner denied all this in his 2004 memoir. Polner concluded, "Kiner became the scapegoat for [Rickey's] failure to improve the club." The parallels to Alex Rodriguez's stay in Texas are obvious.
The 1952 Pirates lost 112 games, the worst record of any major league team since 1935. Home attendance dropped by about one-third, and Kiner's batting average fell to .244. Despite his league-leading home-run performance, Rickey cut his salary to $65,000. When Kiner objected, Rickey told him, "We can finish last without you."
Kiner's fellow players had elected him the National League player representative. He and Yankee pitcher Allie Reynolds, representing the American League, renegotiated the pension plan during the off-season. Piling on, Rickey told owner Galbreath that Kiner's leadership role was "bad" for the team
In June 1953 Rickey traded Kiner and four others, including future broadcaster Joe Garagiola, to the Chicago Cubs for six players and a cash payment reported to be as much as $150,000. Pittsburgh fans hanged Rickey in effigy, and some prominent citizens proposed a boycott of Forbes Field until Rickey was fired. But Rickey was right about one thing: the Pirates did finish last without Kiner in 1953 and for the next two years.
Ralph Kiner
by Warren Corbett