Outside of Ty Cobb, Kaline was the greatest player to wear a Detroit Tigers uniform spending his entire 22 year big league career playing at the corner of Michigan & Trumbull. A native of Baltimore (like Babe Ruth), Kaline was signed by the Tigers right out of high school. In fact, Kaline made his big league debut with the Tigers a week after his graduation in June 1953. Kaline finished third in AL Rookie of the Year balloting in 1954. The following year Kaline won his only AL batting title at the age of 20 with a .340 mark. Kaline finished runner up in AL MVP balloting to Yogi Berra.
Eight years later, Kaline would finish runner up in AL MVP balloting to yet another Yankees catcher Elston Howard.
Kaline was named to 18 AL All-Star Teams, won 10 Gold Gloves for his play in right field and earned his only World Series ring in 1968 despite missing two months that season with a broken arm. He would finish his big league career in 1974 with a lifetime batting average of .297 with 3007 hits and 399 career home runs. Amazingly only 4,671 Tigers fans attended Kaline's final game. Kaline was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1980 with 88.3% of the vote by the BBWAA.
Kaline remained with the Tigers' organization for the rest of his life. In 1975, he joined the Tigers TV broadcast booth where he remained until 2002. For the bulk of his tenure in the broadcast booth, Kaline partnered with fellow Hall of Famer George Kell. On a personal note, I saw Kaline and Kell many a Tiger game on WDIV-TV between 1986 and 1991. After his broadcasting career, Kaline joined the Tigers' front office as a special assistant to team president Dave Dombrowski and would retain this role when Dombrowski was replaced by Al Avila in 2015.
In all, he spent 67 years with the team. Al Kaline truly was Mr. Tiger. R.I.P.
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