Baltimore Adventure: Visiting Al Kaline's Childhood Home in the Westport area of Baltimore - Entrepreneur Generations

Here's my story of going to see Al Kaline's ramshackle childhood home today in Baltimore:

Growing up in the Detroit area in the late 1980s, when I became a huge and lifelong Tigers fan (that 1987 season was magical to a 10-year old boy), I was lucky enough to have the announcing teams of Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey on the radio, and George Kell and Al Kaline on the TV. Kaline and Kell were both Tigers' players and Hall of Famers who played before my time; Kaline, in particular, is one of the greatest baseball players to ever play the game, ranking 27th all-time in Wins Above Replacement player. He started playing for the Tigers at the age of 18, and played 22 years, during which time he was a 17-time All-Star; he won ten Gold Gloves; and he amassed 3,007 hits (becoming only the 9th player to reach that milestone at the time) and 399 home runs in an offensively depressed era.

The legendary Kell/Kaline broadcasat team

And let me tell you, Al Kaline is Detroit Tigers baseball. Through all the thick and thin (and it's been mostly thin in my lifetime, with record-setting loss seasons; 12 straight losing seasons at one point; and no World Series victory since 1984), he has been a face of the franchise, even in retirement. When I was growing up, I thought alkaline batteries were named after Al Kaline.  

Al Kaline at 18, playing for the Tigers

Al Kaline is only the second of two total members of the Baseball Hall of Fame who were born in Baltimore, the first, of course, being Babe Ruth (blog entry of me visiting his mom's grave just blocks from my house here). In my religious watching of Kell/Kaline broadcasts in my youth, I believe Kaline's discussion of his hometown of Baltimore helped indoctrinate me into liking the city, before I even visited. When I decided to seek out a new hometown after graduating from college back in 2001, Baltimore already seemed familiar to me, working class and industrial like Detroit, from all of his loving stories of his hometown. I visited it and fell in love, and I'm still here.

Al Kaline in 2016, at 81, talking with Cameron Maybin.

The idea to visit Kaline's childhood house came recently, when I took my first ever trip to The National Baseball Hall of Fame, where I saw, among thousands of other amazing things, Al Kaline's Hall of Fame plaque, as well, in the gift shop, a biography called Al Kaline: The Biography of a Tigers Icon. Flipping throughout that book, I learned Kaline's childhood home was 2222 Cedley St., in the Westport area of Baltimore, and I decided I would visit it sometime this summer.

Al Kaline's Hall of Fame plaque, photo taken 6/22/16

Obligatory Hall-of-Fame selfie, repping the Detroit Tigers of course.

I was reminded about this this past Friday (7/9/16), leaving the Orioles/Angels game, a young woman stopped my dad, who was wearing a t-shirt listing all the Detroit Tigers in the Hall of Fame (a souvenir from my visit), and asked to photograph his shirt. It turns out that Al Kaline is her great uncle. So, while Al Kaline lives in the Detroit area, he still has roots in Baltimore. Indeed, I coached a game once at Caroll Park, and an old guy there, after some conversation, pointed to a building and told me that he once saw Al Kaline hit it in the air with a home run.  

So, today, I plugged the address into the GPS, and ended up in Westport, an area of the city far off my usual stomping grounds, sandwiched between the Patapsco River and just south of where 295 and 95 intersect. 

2222 Cedley St. is a white-painted brick rowhouse in the middle of a block. Its windows are boarded up, weeds are overgrown, and there's a key box on the doorknob, implying that it might be on the market (though I don't think it is). 

Al Kaline's childhood home at 2222 Cedley St today (July 2016).

According to what I have read, Al Kaline's neighborhood was probably always working class, as his parents were laborers. His father, Nicholas Kaline (1901-1988) worked at the old broom factory on Boston St., while his mother, Naomi Kaline (1906-1998) scrubbed floors. (Note: the Kalines are buried in Glen Burnie.) Today, the neighborhood probably could only euphemistically be called working class; there appeared to be several empty houses and lots of overgrowth. It looks like an area waiting for something to happen.

2222 Cedley is the white house with the cone in front.

I was going to just take a couple of quick photos and be on my way, but an interesting thing occurred during my visit. There was an older gentleman in his 50s or 60s at the end of Cedley doing yard work on this hot July morning. I decided to start a conversation with him, asking him if he lived there. "No," he said, but before I let the conversation die, I asked him if he knew who Al Kaline was. He warmed up right away, and revealed in his Baltimore accent that, while this was his sister-in-law's house, he knew the neighborhood well. I told him that I read that a house halfway down the block, 2222 Cedley, was Kaline's childhood home. He seemed confused, and pointed behind him, to a house with a gray back on the parallel street, Sidney Ave.

The back of 2203 Sidney, and the arrowed porch (now covered, but not in 1934) is where a neighbor told me Al Kaline was actually physically born.

This house, he says, was what he thought was Al Kaline's childhood home. In fact, he says that Al Kaline's sister lived there until a few years ago, before she moved to West Virginia and passed away. In fact, he says, she had told him before she left that her brother Al Kaline was actually born on the porch (now covered) of that house.

2203 Sidney, also a Kaline home (at least extended family), is the second house from the end. It's occupied now and looks in good shape, especially compared to 2222 Cedley.

I was confused by this, but thought the biographer could have had the address wrong. But looking up property records, it does appear that a Claire Kaline sold the 2203 Sidney house in 2006 (the 2222 Cedley house doesn't have any Kalines in their last three purchasers). A comment on Author David B. Stinson's blog by Mark Tharle reveals more: "I have another connection with you now. My wife Kathy Kaline, 2nd cousin to Al Kaline. Al and his parents lived with my father inlaw, Al’s cousin, Sherwood Kaline (George) and his parents Brian and Emilia Kaline when they were kids @ 2203 Sidney Ave. My inlaws owned a home @ 2208 Cedley St and I bought a home 2211 Cedley St and lived there for 12 years. Stories I have been told that my father inlaw (George) was a good catcher/hitter in fast pitch softball, and Al didn’t care for the softball game and perferred playing hardball."

Judging from the comment, it seems that perhaps the Kaline siblings (Kaline had two older sisters, Margaret Vracar, who passed away in 2000, and Caroline Montgomery, and I can't find any records if she may have passed away) did live on Sidney for some time, confirming the gentleman's story on the street. Or perhaps it was a Kaline cousin's house, and he was mistaking the woman who lived there for his sister. Or maybe the sister moved in with the cousin. I'm not sure. Either way, the whole block radius is seeped in Kaline baseball legend. And, I would say that few know about it.

Here's a relevant excerpt from Al Kaline: The Biography of a Tigers Icon (Jim Hawkins): "Where I was born, I didn't live close to any ballpark... I couldn't walk to a ballpark if I wanted to play ball. And I couldn't ride my bicycle there, because I didn't have a bicycle for a long time. I had to be driven. The closest ballpark was the one my school used. But it was three miles from my house. When I was in high school, I had to take a trolley from our neighborhood first, then catch a bus just to get to my school, which was near Baltimore's Inner Harbor. And we didn't have a baseball field at my school, either. So, after school, we had to catch another ride to get to the ballpark where we practiced. My dad would have to pick me up after practice. Or I would have to walk home. That was scary because it would always be dark by then, and it was a bad neighborhood in those days between the ballpark and my house. In those days, the Inner Harbor was all wooden shacks, and they always warned us never to go downtown because downtown Baltimore was terrible. Whenever I walked home, I had to walk past a junkyard. That as where I learned how to run. Those junkyard dogs would be barking and snarling. Even though they were behind the fence, I would always be running when I went past that junkyard."

Note: Kaline went to Southern High School, which is now called Digital High School. Today's Digital's baseball team practices and plays at Swann Park (across the river from Cedley St.) but, during Al Kaline's time, I think they may have played at either Caroll Park or Latrobe Field. He played at both of those places a lot, at least, but I haven't read any Swann Park stories with Al Kaline. (Swann Park is a very beautiful field, however, cleaned up from arsenic about ten years ago and overlooking the water.)

Kaline's street is just steps from the Patapsco River.

Local author and baseball historian David B. Stinson had a blog entry similar to this one three years ago, located here; it's very good. In the blog entry, entitled "Can Redevelopment of Westport Waterfront save Al Kaline's Boyhood Home?"he wonders if the changes coming to Westport could save Al Kaline's dilapidated childhood home.

In the three years since Stinson wrote that blog entry, the previously proposed Patrick Turner development has not happened, but Kevin Plank has purchased much land very close to Cedley Street for his proposed Under Armour redevelopment plan. There is still a lot up in the air regarding that, but it would be pretty awesome if Al Kaline's childhood home were preserved in the redevelopment.

Meanwhile, I'm tempted to try to purchase it and create a museum (though I suspect homeowners are trying to hold onto property there right now with the new Under Armour redevelopment having the potential to really raise real estate values there). 

See below for the Plank proposal and how close the Kaline childhood home is to it.

Anyhow, there's a cool piece of Baltimore history for you, especially if you're a baseball fan!

David B. Stinson has another really cool piece of writing about this area, where he searches for Westport Stadium, Baltimore's last Negro league park. Highly recommended.

from Epiphany in Baltimore http://ift.tt/29J0Pu9 Baltimore Adventure: Visiting Al Kaline's Childhood Home in the Westport area of Baltimore - Entrepreneur Generations

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