interesting.....................
By never playing in the minors and wearing a Tigers uniform for every game, Kaline is in a very small group of players who performed for one team and one team only. Another was a Hall of Fame contemporary, left-handed pitcher Sandy Koufax of the Dodgers. They faced each other twice, in All-Star Games in the 1960s, with Kaline singling and fouling out.
Baseball’s rules in the 1950s kept the two out of the minors at the start of their careers. Back then, there wasn’t an amateur draft — the vehicle that gives one club exclusive signing rights to an amateur player. To keep down the bidding wars on amateur players in those pre-draft days, baseball mandated that any player signed for more than $4,000 would have to spend two years in the majors before he could be sent to the minors for seasoning.