There’s no crying in baseball - Justin Verlander

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Justin Verlander got the sign he was coming out in the sixth inning today. It was the last inning he will ever pitch.

Then his 7 year old daughter came sprinting out of the dugout toward the mound. Genevieve was wearing a Tigers jersey with VERLANDER on the back. She ran all the way out there to take the ball from her dad. He bent down and grabbed her and his whole body started shaking. He held onto her for more than 15 seconds and sobbed.

A.J. Hinch had walked out with her. His teammates came out behind him. Then Justin Verlander walked off a Major League mound for the last time holding his daughter's hand.

His wife Kate Upton was waiting on the warning track with their 1 year old son Bellamy. The four of them stood out there on the warning track and held onto each other while the whole ballpark watched.


Tyler Kinley came in to replace him. It took five and a half minutes before Kinley threw a pitch. Comerica Park would not stop. They had been doing it all afternoon. They stood for him when he warmed up. They stood for him when he walked back to the dugout. They stood for him when he took the field.

Here is what the man they were standing for did.

The Detroit Tigers took Verlander 2nd overall in 2004. He debuted in 2005 and won Rookie of the Year in 2006.

Three no hitters. Three Cy Youngs. Nine All Star teams. In 2011 he won the MVP. Not the Cy Young, the MVP, the one that goes to a hitter almost every single year.

He won both that season.

He won two World Series with the Houston Astros, in 2017 and 2022.

He pitched for the New York Mets. He pitched for the San Francisco Giants. And in February he signed a one year deal to come back to Detroit and finish it where it started.

266 wins. 3.33 career ERA. And with the six he struck out today, 3,560 strikeouts, 8th all time.

Today's line was 5 and a third innings, 5 hits, 2 runs, 1 walk, 6 strikeouts on 91 pitches. Two solo home runs beat him. He left trailing the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-0. Which means the last thing that happened to Justin Verlander on a baseball field was that his team came back without him. Down to the bottom of the ninth, Eduardo Valencia hit a two run homer and the Tigers won 4-3. Verlander did not get the win. Jacob Waguespack did.

Twenty one seasons. 266 of them ended with a W next to his name.

This one did not, and it will be the one people remember. Because the picture from today is not a stat line.

It is a 43 year old man on his knees on the mound in Detroit, shaking, holding a 7 year old in his own jersey.

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