Illegal Foreign Object

There is no name more synonymous with Detroit Tigers baseball than that of the Hall of Fame outfielder Al Kaline. Nicknamed “Mr. Tiger”, Kaline spent the entirety of his 22-year career in Detroit, making 18 All-Star teams while winning 10 Gold Glove Awards and the 1968 World Series championship.

Willie Horton was a helluva ballplayer in his own right, clubbing 325 home runs en route to 4 All-Star Game appearances and a piece of the same ‘68 championship. Though Horton isn’t treated with the same reverence as that of the legendary Kaline, he accomplished something that no other person walking the Earth can claim: he once saved Al Kaline’s life.

When Horton was a kid in the ‘50s, he loved to box. So skilled was he as a pugilist that he earned the rank of a Golden Gloves level fighter. Willie also worked in the Detroit Tigers clubhouse, helping out where needed. It was during this time that he first met his hero, Al Kaline. Just a few years later, Horton and Kaline would find themselves running down baseballs in the very same outfield, but it was on a day almost a decade later that the names of the two men would become inexorably linked.

On May 30th, 1970, the Tigers were playing the Milwaukee Brewers. A deep fly ball was hit to right center field, but neither Kaline nor center fielder Jim Northrup heard the other man call for the ball. The result was a terrible collision that left Kaline laying motionless on the field.

One of the first men on the scene, Milwaukee Brewers bullpen coach Jackie Moore was quoted as saying, “I could hear him gasping for air — he was choking and turning blue. I realized he had swallowed his tongue and I tried to pry his jaw open, but the best I could do was get two fingers between his teeth.”

Enter Willie Horton.

Rushing over and seeing what Moore was attempting to do, he cleared everyone out of his way, locked onto Kaline’s lower jaw, and pried open his mouth wide enough to retrieve the tongue of the future hall of famer from the back of his throat, immediately opening his airway.

Horton later told the Detroit Free Press: “When I was a Golden Gloves boxer as a kid, I had been shown what to do in a situation like that. I acted quickly, compressed his chest, grabbed the back of his jaw, pried open his mouth and we got his tongue out of the way. My hand kept his mouth open until the trainer (Milwaukee trainer Curt Rayer) got there. I still have the scar on my right hand from his teeth marks.”

Al Kaline missed one game.

Two months later, Detroit held Al Kaline Day at Tiger Stadium. In 2004, Willie Horton was given his own “day”. Both men have statues on display at Detroit’s Comerica Park.

I had the honor of meeting Al Kaline one Spring Training when I was a kid. He was broadcasting games for the Tigers by then and was nice enough to sign a baseball for me. My biggest memory of that moment, however, was seeing my dad’s reaction to meeting him. My dad is a longtime Yankees fan (and grew up worshipping Mickey Mantle), but Al was his “favorite non-Yankee”. Normally unfazed by celebrity of any kind, it was brilliant watching Dad become a kid again right before my eyes.

Willie Horton gave us that moment together, his heroic deed in 1970 continuing to bring joy to others some two decades later.

Al Kaline passed away in 2020 at the age of 85. It was 50 extra years than he would have been given had it not been for the quick thinking of his friend Willie Horton.