From the Files

A look back by a lifelong fan from a 1991 visit with Detroit Tiger greats George Kell and Al Kaline. Kell, of Swifton, died in 2009. Kaline, an 18-time All Star, died Monday.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporters who covered memorable Arkansas sports events of the past share their insights from today.

FAYETTEVILLE — The sad news of Al Kaline’s death on Monday made me think back to the time in May of 1991 when I met the Detroit Tigers’ Hall of Fame outfielder.

As a Michigan native, Kaline always has been my favorite baseball player, and I was fortunate enough to talk with him for a story I did on George Kell, the Tigers’ Hall of Fame third baseman from Swifton.

I talked with Kaline and Kell — the Tigers’ television broadcasting team at the time — when Detroit came to Arlington,

Texas, for a series against the Texas Rangers.

Kell invited me to sit in the broadcast booth with he and Kaline for a few innings. That was a real thrill.

The angle of the story was that no matter where baseball had taken Kell, he continued to make Swifton his home.

Look up Kell’s bio and you’ll see that he was born in Swifton on Aug. 23, 1922, and died in Swifton on March 26, 2009, at the age of 86.

Kaline and Kell couldn’t have been nicer or more helpful when I talked to them. Reading up on both men, you know that’s how they treated everyone they came across.

Kell retired as a player before I was born, so I don’t have memories of him, but I grew up following Kaline and the Tigers.

Even when we moved from Saginaw, Mich., and lived in Wisconsin and Missouri, I could get Detroit radio station WJR at night and listen to Tigers games called by Ernie Harwell.

By 1991, I had covered legendary coaches at Arkansas such as Frank Broyles, Lou Holtz and Ken Hatfield in football, and Eddie Sutton and Nolan Richardson in basketball, but I have to say I was a little nervous and intimidated talking to Al Kaline.

But Mr. Tiger — as Kaline became known — immediately put me at ease, as did Kell.

I also got to meet Harwell, who like Kaline and Kell is enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

I talked to Harwell about

Kell, but when Harwell — a Georgia native — found out I worked for a newspaper in Arkansas, he asked me if I knew Frank Broyles?

As a matter of fact, I told Harwell, I cover him because he’s the University of Arkansas athletic director.

Harwell told me that while working as a radio broadcaster in Georgia before the Atlanta Crackers traded him to the Brooklyn Dodgers — for backup catcher Cliff Dapper in 1948 — he had covered some of Broyles’ games at Decatur High School and Georgia Tech.

A lot of people kid me about finding an Arkansas angle in any story, but it often works out that way.

Plus, it shows how many people knew Frank Broyles.

If you’re lucky enough to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., you’ll see that Kell’s plaque is hung next to Brooks Robinson’s.

Kell and Robinson — the Baltimore Orioles star from Little Rock — were both inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1983, so that explains their plaques being together.

Still, two Arkansas natives who both played third base having their Hall of Fame plaques side by side is pretty cool.

Kaline was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1980 in his first season of eligibility.

The Detroit Free Press ran a story this week about how actor Tom Selleck — a Michigan native and big Tigers fan — got to know Kaline, and even as a Hollywood star he was nervous talking to his boyhood idol.

When Selleck played the title character in the hit television series Magnum P.I., he wore a Tigers baseball cap.

As a big Tigers fan, I often wear the Olde English D as well.

Several years ago I was wearing my Tigers cap while playing blackjack in a casino in Baton Rouge. A woman sitting next to me — who’d clearly had quite a bit to drink — kept telling me I reminded her of someone.

Finally, I said, “Well, a lot of people tell me I look like Tom Selleck.”

The woman paused, shook her head and then said, “No, that’s not who it is.”

She’d had a lot to drink, but she wasn’t THAT drunk.