Later Career
Kralick was traded by the Minnesota Twins to the Cleveland Indians for Jim Perry on May 2, 1963. The transaction was made out of necessity for both teams. Kralick, along with Jim Kaat and Dick Stigman, had been one of three left-handers on the Twins' four-man starting rotation, while the Indians' only southpaw starter was Sam McDowell. Kralick was an All-Star in 1964. He played the final game of his major league career on April 23, 1967.
His contract was sold by the Indians eight days later on May 1 to the New York Mets, who were set to assign him to the Jacksonville Suns in preparation for a May 11 promotion to the majors. Instead, he was sidelined for the remainder of the campaign after he sustained a cerebral contusion and temporary diplopia when he lost control of his automobile which crashed into a retaining wall on the Memorial Shoreway near Cleveland Stadium in the early hours of May 2. The Mets offered him an invitation to its spring training camp prior to the 1968 season, but he chose to officially retire as an active player and begin working as an insurance salesman for North American Life Assurance Company of Toronto.
Read more about this topic: Jack Kralick
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I’ve been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had their career.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)