[3] Kralick was born in Youngstown, Ohio, an industrial town with a strong amateur baseball tradition, and attended Michigan State University.

[4] But the parent Chicago White Sox released Kralick during the middle of the 1958 minor-league season, and he was signed as a free agent by the Washington Senators' organization.

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.

[9] 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.

[9][10][11] 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 The North American Life Assurance Company of Toronto.