Mr Tiger (Al Kaline) is 80 years old today.

Free Republic ^ | 12/19/2014 | none

[cripplecreek]

They just don't make them like this anymore.

[chimera]

Nice to see that Al got his WS ring that year. He had a great Series with 2 HRs and 8 RBIs. Not only Mr. Tiger but Mr. Loyalty. He also won the Roberto Clemente award in 1973, which many consider a great achievement, since it recognizes the winner for bringing honor to baseball by acts on and off the field.

[cripplecreek]

Willie Horton walked out of the park in his uniform and waded into the middle of the riots and stood on a car with a bullhorn begging people to go home.

[onedoug]

Happy Birthday, Al. Many happy returns.

[smokingfrog]

I like those old uniforms.

[dfwgator]

Tigers at least have kept their classic look.

[dfwgator]

I had this record as a kid.

The Year of the Tiger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S6c2va0ulc

[shove_it]

I just looked Kaline up on Wiki which reminded me that he signed with the Tigers as a ‘bonus baby’ as a highschool player for $35,000. When my mother heard about that, she immediately became a lifelong Tigers fan and kept hounding me to get better at playing the game so she could sell me as a bonus baby — but at that stage of my life my interests became more consumed with cars and girls. Oh well ...

Thanks for the memories by posting this, CC. I join the other FReeper fans in wishing Al a happy 80th birthday and many more.

[Vigilanteman]

I’d forgotten about that. That was really classy on the part of Willie Horton. People forget that the Tiger outfield that year was do great that Al Kaline was technically a backup (less plate appearances than Horton, Northrup or Stanley) and the Tigers had a .370 hitter on the bench used mostly as a pinch hitter (less than 100 plate appearances, as I recall).

[cripplecreek]

$35 grand in the 50s was quite a chunk of change.

[cripplecreek]

Willie Horton is another solid Christian. Here he explains that he didn’t know why but later realized it was because God called him to do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My6nV7Iy_Rk

[tomkat]

Six years old when my dad and the neighbor guy took me to see my first pro baseball game - Detroit, June '61, Tigers/Yankees .

Kaline/Cash/Lolich et al
Maris/Mantle/Richardson/Berra et al
Yep, Maris' * year

Talk about your 'wish I could go back knowing what I know now' !

To a little kid, it was absolute magic, and the field looked so H U G E

<sniff>

[harpu]

"The Tigers should have stayed at Tiger Stadium...it was magic."

Actually, when I first saw the Tigers and my hero too, Al Kaline, the stadium was known as Briggs Stadium. When I left for the Navy in 1960, and returned it was then known as Tiger Stadium.

Originally built in 1895, and known as Bennett Park, a new Tiger owner, Frank Navin, torn it down in 1912 and reconstructed the stadium and called it Navin Field. In 1932, Navin died and the Tiger's new owner, Walter Briggs, improved the stadium and enlarged it to 53,000 and renamed it Briggs Stadium.

[harpu]

Besides Kaline steadiness at the plate, he was known for his rocket-like arm that threw out many players who over played their base running.

I remember in his rookie year, Kaline threw out many batters who had a clean base hit to right field but mistakenly rounded first towards second and got thrown out before they could get back to first.

[cripplecreek]

A developer for the Tiger Stadium site has been approved. The diamond will remain intact for little league and soft ball games and Tiger related events.

http://www.mlive.com/business/detroit/index.ssf/2014/12/development_plan_selected_for.html

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Al Kaline: The ball player who was so good, they named a battery after him.

[Netz]

Harwell, Kaline and Kell were the magic of radio play by play for Detroit. I remember on “Bat Day” walking behind Kaline and his two small kids wearing uniforms on my way to my seat, it was a special, fleeting moment.

[Netz]

In my lifetime, it was Tiger Stadium... (I’m 56)...

[riverdawg]

I have Al Kaline’s autograph on a baseball that I took to a pre-season barnstorming game played in my hometown in the late 50s. Also on that baseball are autographs from Cal McLish, Harmon Killebrew, Jim Bunning, Paul Foytack, John Roseboro, and other stars from that era.

[shove_it]

You have a real keepsake there. My Kaline autograph on a program likely got tossed out with my comic books when I went off to college. There are many unrealized treasures from my youth I’d like to have back now.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/DET/1953-roster.shtml

Check out the salaries

[riverdawg]

Many of the players back in the 1950s and 60s had full-time off-season jobs to pay the bills.

I told my mother in the 1980s (before the baseball card market collapsed from over-issue) that if she hadn't thrown out my card collection we would be having our conversation on some Caribbean island.