It was a single, brief moment -- lasting maybe five or six seconds -- but it bears mentioning here. It was before a Tigers game last summer, and I was checking out Jim Leyland's lineup card, the oversized version posted outside his office for the media -- and his players -- to peruse. Another peruser sidled up next to me, also taking a gander at that day's batting order. I instinctively turned to silently greet whomever was joining me.
And Al Kaline, still entwined in the organization, returned my head nod with a lift of his eyebrow and a nod of his own. Then we both went back to looking at the lineup.
It's not surprising to see Kaline hanging around the Tigers, of course. He's still an employee, just as he's been since 1953. And at no time in the subsequent 55 years was he absent from the organization. First he was a player, for 22 years. Then he was a spring training instructor. Then he was a broadcaster. Then he was hired by owner Mike Ilitch as a consultant, along with Willie Horton. No employment gaps in five-and-a-half decades.
Gordie Howe was back at Joe Louis Arena yesterday, being honored on the eve of his 80th birthday. It's not shocking to see No. 9 at his old team's stadium these days, either, but that's where the comparison with the great Tiger Al Kaline ends.
Howe has huge gaps in his 64-year association with the Red Wings. But his resume should be wall-to-wall Red Wing, as Kaline's is head-to-toe Tigers.
You can blame the Norris family, and maybe even Ned Harkness, for that. Howe retired from the Red Wings in 1971, and was given a do-nothing VP job. He was Steve Yzerman, but with no purpose, no guidance, and no dignity. He'd show up to an occasional practice, but was treated coldly. Harkness was the team's GM, and it wasn't until Howe announced that the WHA's Houston Aeros were interested in him and his two boys that Ned made a clumsy, half-hearted offer to step down and be Howe's assistant.
Yet there was another chance for Howe to return to the Red Wings. When sons Mark and Marty were wanting to opt out of their obligation to the Boston Bruins (who owned their NHL rights) in exploring a jump to the NHL in the mid-to-late-1970s, wife Colleen spoke to the Red Wings about all three Howes coming back to Detroit. She was rebuffed. Howe returned to the NHL in 1979, but as a member of the Hartford Whalers. He retired in 1980, and by that time the relationship with the Norrises was pretty much non-existent.
It's one criticism I have of Ilitch as Red Wings owner that he never reached out to Howe after buying the team in 1982, offering Gordie to come back to the organization, where he belonged.
Howe first suited up with the Red Wings in 1946, and there's no good reason that he wasn't the team's Kaline -- always around, in various capacities, but always drawing a paycheck.
Another NHL wrong was finally righted in Chicago last month, when former Blackhawk greats Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita were welcomed back into the organization formally, ending a bamboozling estrangement that began when Hull bolted for the WHA in 1972, and continued when Mikita retired in 1980.
The Red Wings have honored Howe plenty over the years with various ceremonies. There's the magnificent statue of him in JLA, for one. Yesterday's festivities were low-key but classy.
But there's a difference between honoring someone and doing the honorable thing. The Red Wings failed Gordie Howe on the latter, and so he'll never be the team's Al Kaline -- not really.
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