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.
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.
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).