Ralph Kiner - Broadcasting Career

Broadcasting Career

In 1961, Kiner entered the broadcast booth for the Chicago White Sox. The following year, Kiner, Lindsey Nelson and Bob Murphy began broadcasting the games of the expansion New York Mets on WOR-TV in New York. The trio rotated announcing duties. Kiner also hosted a post-game show known as "Kiner's Korner" on WOR-TV.

Kiner was known for his occasional malapropisms, usually connected with getting people's names wrong, such as calling broadcasting partner Tim McCarver as "Tim MacArthur". He even once called himself "Ralph Korner".

Despite a bout with Bell's palsy, which left him with slightly slurred speech, Kiner is still broadcasting, entering his 51st year of doing Mets broadcasts as of the start of the 2012 baseball season, though only as an occasional guest analyst. He is the only broadcaster to survive all of the Mets history; Nelson had left the Mets for the San Francisco Giants in 1979, and Murphy retired in 2003. (Nelson died in 1995 and Murphy in 2004.) Kiner's tenure with the Mets is the third-longest for an active broadcaster with a single team, trailing only those of Los Angeles Dodgers announcers Vin Scully (1950–present) and Jaime Jarrín (1959–present). His traditional home run call -- "It is gone, goodbye" or "That ball is gone, goodbye"—is a signature phrase in baseball.

Kiner appears occasionally on SportsNet New York (SNY) and WPIX, which currently televise Mets games. During these visits (usually once a week), regular announcers Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez, and Ron Darling make room for Kiner as he shares stories of old-time baseball, as well as the current state of the game. As of the 2013 seasonj, he is the oldest active announcer.