Taylor Cooper

Justin Verlander skipped a month of rehab to pitch one more game. He hadn't started since March. He's 43, and a hip injury plus a torn-up hamstring had eaten nearly his entire season. A normal rehab timeline ends with the season over and the career finished on a training table. So he compressed it, got through one bullpen session Tuesday, and the Tigers gave him the ball Saturday. The ending was engineered a year in advance. Verlander re-signed with Detroit last winter for exactly this. The Tigers drafted him #2 overall in 2004, he wore their uniform for 12 seasons before Houston and the two rings, and he came back at 43 so the last pitch of his career would come in the same uniform as the first one. The Pirates shortstop he faced in the first inning is 20. He wasn't alive when Verlander made his debut in July 2005. Five-plus innings, six strikeouts, career total 3,560, eighth in the history of the sport. Detroit walked it off 4-3 so he wouldn't take a loss. And the exit was the one part nobody planned. When the manager came out to take the ball, Verlander's 7-year-old daughter sprinted onto the field to the mound. He said it blindsided him, that she'd never seen him cry like that. He walked off holding her hand while the whole park stood. Most pitchers never get an ending. An elbow or a shoulder picks one for them, and the last start only becomes the last start in hindsight. Verlander spent 21 seasons watching that happen to everyone around him. He built his own ending, and the only moment he couldn't script is the one nobody will forget.