Detroit Lions great Joe Schmidt has an epic piece of Al Kaline memorabilia

Of all the pieces of memorabilia Joe Schmidt has from his playing days with the Detroit Lions, one picture stands above the rest.

Sometime in the 1950s, Schmidt, the Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker, attended a sports banquet in Detroit with Tigers outfielder Al Kaline and Red Wings forward Gordie Howe.

The three posed for a picture, with Schmidt in front, Howe in the middle and Kaline in back. Schmidt tracked down a copy of the photo after it ran in the local paper, had his Detroit sports contemporaries autograph it, and for the past 60 or so years, it's hung in a frame somewhere in his house.

"I couldn’t hold a stick to either one of those in regards to ability," Schmidt said Monday. "I (told my wife the other day) all I did was jump on piles and Al hit a baseball and Gordie hit the puck skating. It was a different sport altogether than what I was doing. Mine was just knocking people around."

Kaline died Monday at 85, and Schmidt and other Lions greats remembered Mr. Tiger as a distinguished baseball player and man of class.

"He was special," former Lions linebacker Mike Lucci said. "He was a cut above. He was kind of like the Jim Brown in Cleveland in baseball. He was Al Kaline and he was the guy in baseball. He was as good as they came."

Lucci and Kaline hung out occasionally during their playing days, and saw each other more often in retirement as members at Oakland Hills Country Club.

Kaline took part in a few of Lucci's charity golf outings, and Lucci said the two sometimes would joke about the money they made as players and how it compared to the salaries players make now.

Kaline made his major league debut in 1953 as an 18-year old, while Lucci played the 1965-73 seasons with the Lions.

"He told me the story one time of when he first got to $100,000 and I guess he batted .299 or whatever it was, it wasn’t like the year before," Lucci said. "And they wanted to cut his pay. I told him, I said if you were playing today they’d have to give you half the team."

As gaudy as the numbers were that Kaline put up in his Hall of Fame career, with 399 home runs and a .297 average, Lucci said he was more reserved than some of the other Tigers he got to know off the field.

[Al Kaline dies: Baseball world, Detroit Tigers fans, players mourn]

'We were obviously playing at the same place (at Tiger Stadium) and we rooted for him," Lucci said. "You had (Bill) Freehan and him and (Norm) Cash and (Mickey) Stanley and Earl Wilson. Probably ran around with some of the other ones a little more than him. He was a little quieter, or stayed out of public a little bit. But I’ve known him since the '60s and he was always classy."

Schmidt called Kaline "a class guy," too.

He and Kaline were acquaintances more than close friends. They ran into each other at banquets a few times during their playing days, and several times after when they were both in the automobile business, and he said he never heard Kaline utter a bad word about anyone.

That's another reason why he cherishes the photo that sits in the TV room of his Florida home. Kaline never bragged about his accomplishments. Neither did Howe. They both carried themselves like the winners they were.

"When you’re good like those two guys, you don’t have to brag," Schmidt said. "Everybody knows about it."

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett. Read more on the Detroit Lions and sign up for our Lions newsletter.