Sean Kirst: Roy Kinyon turned down the Bisons once. This time, he couldn't say no

Roy suffered a life-changing broken leg just after World War II, so he kept a shin pad in the back hall, on the same shelf as the baseball gloves. He wore that pad to protect a plate in his weakened leg as he went into a crouch, and he would serve as a sidewalk catcher as Carl let it pop.

“He never said no,” Carl said of playing catch, even when Roy was tired from a shift at Harrison Radiator. Carl was a lot younger than siblings Gary, Bruce and Kathryn, who had their own childhood time with their dad, and they loved seeing how he still got out there with their little brother.

Really, that is what led to Roy’s impending one-day Fourth of July contract-signing-with-the-Buffalo Bisons at Sahlen Field. The event is generating national attention, mainly because Roy – who turned 100 in May – is a vital guy who tends to his flowers, hangs clippings or pictures that catch his fancy on his kitchen cupboards and leads you to what he calls his “galleries,” detailed exhibits of family lore that include mementos of his wife, Tess, and lots of baseball.

This week's unexpected turn as a media star flows directly from a question asked at Roy's 100th birthday party in Lockport, where his son Bruce wondered out loud if his dad could still throw a baseball.

“I could go two innings,” Roy said, confidence based on a longtime ritual.

During the three or four hot showers he takes a day to ease muscles sore from gardening, he relaxes his arms and shoulders by doing a kind of shadowboxing version of his windup and release.

So yes, the old shortstop was ready to play a little catch. After some driveway small talk, Roy stepped forward and released a rocket, low and away.

“I could not believe how hard he threw that ball,” said Carl, who huddled up with his brothers and arrived at one thought:

What about the Bisons?

The Kinyon siblings grew up with the story of how a front office guy from Buffalo's International League club watched the last semipro game Roy ever played, with a Krull Park team from Olcott. Afterward, the man stood at home plate on the empty field and invited Roy to work out for Bison management, but Roy turned him down.

This was during World War II. He was joining the Navy. Roy became a chief motor machinist’s mate who was on the USS Shoshone, a ship off Iwo Jima, when the Americans did their memorable flag-raising after searing, inch-by-inch battle with Japan.

In our conversation, Roy choked up only twice – when he spoke of that moment, and when he described everything his kids did to bring about Monday's signing and first pitch.

He played some baseball in the service, and the game was on his mind when he came home to his parents' Niagara County farm. Roy took a job with a farm equipment company, rather than doing shift work at Harrison Radiator, so he could play semipro in the evenings.

The decision shaped the rest of his life. He had climbed up high to do some work on a sprayer when he fell and shattered his leg. That both ended any baseball comeback and sent him to a Buffalo hospital, where he met a personable young nurse from Tonawanda.

Theresa Balling, "Tess" for short, soon agreed to marry Roy, but she had no wish to live on a farm. They compromised on Lockport. Kinyon took a job with Harrison and measured off that sidewalk at South and Pound, allowing his kids to throw teenage smoke to a 50-something father who never asked them to slow it down.

Roy learned that stoic ethic as a little guy on an Appleton farm, where his older brother Ralph could throw it hard. Roy used his own dad’s ancient catcher's glove, tattered padding worn away, and he quickly learned how much it burned if you caught a fastball flat against your palm.

Roy endured it as a thank you to Ralph. The two brothers slept in a farmhouse so cold that snow made its way through their bedroom window. Whatever warmth they had came through an open shaft from the kitchen. On frigid nights, Ralph made sure his brother slept closest to the heat.

Playing catch, then, was about love and loyalty, which his kids reaffirmed after seeing how Roy threw the ball on his 100th birthday. Carl called a bowling buddy, Glen Ufland, the Bisons chief usher. He mentioned the possibility of a first pitch, and Ufland – who loves what the team does with fireworks and the Buffalo Philharmonic on the Fourth of July – spoke with ticket office director Mike Poreda.

From there, the tale reached Brad Bisbing, assistant general manager. He kept thinking of how Roy gave up the dream of trying out for the Bisons to enlist, instead.

“How heroic is that?” said Bisbing, who not only set up Roy's first pitch, but went one step better for Monday's 6:05 p.m. game against Syracuse: In front of what is always a big holiday turnout at Sahlen Field, Roy – who has never stepped inside that historic downtown ballpark – will sign a one-day contract as a Bisons shortstop.

With his family in the stands wearing caps emblazoned with "ROY KINYON 100," Roy will then throw out that first pitch. This 100-year-old great-grandfather promises velocity beyond what he calls “a loop ball,” the kind of hesitant, pokey delivery he associates with these ceremonies.

He remains a baseball guy. Roy, every night, watches the Yankees and Mets on side-by-side televisions. He remembers listening as a kid to living room radio broadcasts of the Yankees of Ruth and Gehrig, even before he batted north of .700 for a Barker High School team that won back-to-back championships.

He notes with gratitude how Tess Balling Kinyon – her death in 2013 ended a marriage of 64 years – joined him at a Yankees game during their New York City honeymoon. He has trophies and old team photos from his years coaching Little League set out in a "gallery," each one involving its own story.

His most vivid baseball memory is a kind of upside-down triumph, when his errorless teenage play for Olcott's Krull Park semipro club was disrupted by a soft fly to shallow left field. He knew right away he turned the wrong way, and the ball skidded off the heel of his glove before he could self-correct.

Yet the Niagara County farmers who lined the field with pickup trucks immediately starting blowing their horns, a tribute to a kid shortstop who had gone almost two full seasons without an error.

That was nice, really nice. But Roy sometimes lies in bed and imagines he turns the other way, catches the ball and gets his team out of the inning.

Carl, speaking for all his siblings, said that humility defines his dad: “He never forgot anybody." In this retirement of 40 years, Roy savored every second with Tess and routinely checked in on old friends – ready to drive them to the doctor or provide comfort in those inevitable hard times when they said difficult goodbyes to a spouse.

Put simply, he is generous with time, a good fit for living 100 years. Like anyone in that situation, he must cope with losing almost everyone from the world he remembers as a kid, but his children figure this might somehow bring it all together:

On the Fourth of July, he will sign his name to the roar of a crowd that knows a true baseball phenom when it sees one, as Roy Kinyon becomes the newest and oldest Bison, all at once.