This story was excerpted from Anthony DiComo's Mets Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
NEW YORK -- As a small child in Hawaii, Pirates infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa was more into surfing, BMX biking and football than baseball. Yet his maternal grandfather kept trying to steer him to the latter sport.
“Baseball is in your blood,” Kiner-Falefa’s grandfather would tell him.
It was a long part of Kiner-Falefa lore that the family was related to Ralph Kiner, Pittsburgh’s late Hall of Fame outfielder who became a legendary Mets broadcaster. But because Kiner-Falefa’s grandfather moved to Hawaii for college and never returned to the mainland, the younger generations didn’t build strong relationships with that side of the family. It wasn’t until 2022 that Kiner-Falefa managed to confirm the family legend: He was indeed Kiner’s second cousin twice removed.
Independent of all that, from his home in Defiance, Ohio, Scott Kiner was doing his own research. Spurred by Kiner-Falefa’s public statements, Ralph’s son Scott signed up for a genealogy website and traveled deep enough down that rabbit hole to verify that he was, in fact, related to the Pirates infielder.
Scott Kiner’s great-great-grandmother, Mary McPherran Kiner, is Kiner-Falefa’s great-great-great-grandmother. The two are second cousins once removed.
Monday at Citi Field, the Kiner cousins met for the first time. Scott Kiner brought a suitcase full of books, photographs and a charcoal painting to present to his long-lost family member. He was in the middle of explaining the story when Kiner-Falefa walked into the room in a full Pirates uniform.
“I’ve got the chills,” Kiner-Falefa said. “This is awesome. This is a long time coming for me.”
Standing next to Scott, recounting tales of a childhood spent trying to convince his friends he was related to a Hall of Famer, Kiner-Falefa grew emotional. On a trip to New York in 2007, Kiner-Falefa -- then 12 years old -- attended a seemingly random game at Shea Stadium. It was the only Mets game he had ever been to at that point in his life, and it turned out to be Ralph Kiner Night.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I had no idea what I was walking into. We just thought we were going to a Major League game. For it to be Kiner Night, it was a dream come true seeing him on the field getting the ovation and understanding what I’m a part of with the family name.”
Later, when Kiner-Falefa’s career wound through New York as a member of the Yankees from 2022-23, he tried to “wear the name with a lot of pride.” Kiner-Falefa understood not just his cousin’s accomplishments as a Hall of Fame outfielder for the Pirates, Cubs and Indians (including seven consecutive seasons as the National League home run leader), but also the weight of his work in Queens. From the team’s founding in 1962 through the year before he died in 2014, Kiner played a role on Mets broadcasts. He was most famous for “Kiner’s Korner,” a popular postgame show.
At visiting ballparks, Kiner-Falefa has sometimes recognized organists or PA systems playing the “Kiner’s Korner” jingle as his walk-up music.
“I think that shows the respect of the name,” Kiner-Falefa said. “You don’t really do that for a visiting player.”
All the while, back in Ohio, Scott Kiner kept tabs on his cousin. He hoped one day to meet. The Pirates’ trip to Citi Field this week provided the perfect opportunity, lining up with the release of Scott’s memoir, “One of a Kiner,” which details his life as the son of Ralph Kiner and 1950s tennis star Nancy Chaffee.
But for Scott Kiner, this visit was not just some attempt to sell books. Much like his long-lost second cousin, he wanted to climb up a branch of his family tree that he had never fully explored.
“I didn’t doubt his word,” Scott Kiner said of the relation. “But when I did the genealogy, I was like, ‘I need to meet my cousin.’ I did think that today was the right day.”