Detroit — Alan Trammell remembers it vividly. It was in 1977. He and Lou Whitaker had just been called up to the Tigers and they were on the plane, their first big-league road trip.

Onto the plane walked Al Kaline and Trammell was star-struck.

“It was just Al, Al Kaline, Hall of Famer, you know?” Trammell said. “Just the classiness. That was the first thing you noticed. He always dressed appropriately. The way he handled himself. I had the utmost respect for Al and then being around him for all these years now — he never changed.

“That’s just how he was — a consummate professional. The Tigers’ organization and baseball lost an icon today.”

Kaline, who spent his entire professional career in the Tigers organization — 67 years, 22 as a player — and was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1980, died at his home in Bloomfield Hills on Monday. He was 85 years old.

“Someone like Al is never going to be replaced,” Trammell said. “How do you find another person who was with one organization from the time he signed out of high school in 1953 until 2020? And he was still going strong. He was still very much involved.