I was born in the baseball-crazy city of Detroit. From part of first to part of fifth grade (1955-58), I lived in the Redford area of the city, near 6 Mile and Grand River. And during that time, I was really baseball crazy. My Grandma knew all the players and all their statistics and which ones were Catholic and how often they went to communion. And since I worshipped Grandma, I knew all these things, too.
But most of all, I was crazy about Al Kaline. He was only 14 years older me, so he must have been in his early 20s when I was at the height of my baseball-craziness, and I worshipped Al Kaline almost as much as I worshipped Grandma. Now, word had it that Al Kaline had a "very good friend" who lived half a block down the street from us. When we were playing baseball in the street (almost daily), we neighborhood kids would often see Al's classic 1956 pink Cadillac convertible parked down the street, and we were suitably impressed. We certainly didn't want to intrude (we were Midwesterners, after all), so we never went closer to the house to see what was going on - and we never actually saw Al Kaline in person. I always thought that the people in that house were older people who were kind of like grandparents to Al, and it was nice that he went to visit them so often. I think I was about 60 when the thought came to me that the never-seen neighbor Al went to visit, might not be "older people," and might be a young, female person of the opposite gender. I have to admit that, even at the age of 60, my opinion of Al was a little less after that. But still, I have admired Al Kaline all my life, and I'm sad that he's dead at the age of 85.

May he rest in peace.

-Joe-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Kaline