How Justin Verlander, Kevin McGonigle summed up baseball's romance for one Tigers fan in transition

I went to Cooperstown for the first time just a few weeks ago. My friends and I were renting a cabin for the weekend about an hour and a half away, but I left them for a day to make a solo pilgrimage that felt long overdue.

I was affectionately dubbed a "baseball sicko" by a friend after going back to Detroit for less than a day and a half and then lining up three hours ahead of first pitch just to make certain I would receive a Tarik Skubal bobblehead. That designation has had some staying power, and I think waking up at 6 in the morning to be at the Hall right when it opened falls into the same category.

I didn't go the recommended route — second floor, then third, then first. I saved the plaque gallery for last, but I veered straight toward the small art exhibit (only after taking a moment to say hello to Buck O'Neill) on the ground floor and wondered how much trouble I would get into if I tried to steal Norman Rockwell's "Game Called Because of Rain (Tough Call)."

Only then did I go up to the second floor. I mostly breezed by the installation honoring the latest inductees (if Lou Whitaker isn't a Hall of Famer, Jeff Kent shouldn't be), but by the time I'd come out on the other side of everything ranging from Babe Ruth to a Moon Mammoths jersey, I'd spent four hours on that floor alone.

There was no caption too small for me to read, no artifact too insignificant to spend at least a minute examining. If I looked closely enough, I could almost convince myself that I could make out fingerprints in the dirt on a ball Christy Mathewson once held.

How can you not be romantic about baseball?

Baseball took me by surprise. I was never thought of, nor did I think of myself, as much of a sports person before I got into it, and I'm not much of one outside of it. My love — which some might call a hyperfixation, but which I'm lucky enough to call a career — is puzzling to people who meet me. I don't exactly fit into the archetype of what the average baseball fan might look like.

I've struggled to figure out how best to explain why I love the game so much, at least neatly. For a little while, it was about the chance to see something on a spectrum between cool and historic on any given day. Earlier this season, I was in Chicago and wanted to check off Rate Field on my list of ballparks visited. I settled in and watched the Dodgers' Yoshinobu Yamamoto take a perfect game through 7 2/3 innings.

But that doesn't really do it justice. Even casual fans who don't know much about all of the ins-and-outs can still like and appreciate the game for the same reason.

The answer that was in front of me all along struck me as I watched Justin Verlander, whose plaque I will make another pilgrimage to Cooperstown to see in 2032, walk off the mound with his daughter after his final start as a Detroit Tiger.

There's a clear reason I spent four hours on one floor at the Hall of Fame, why I binge-watched Ken Burns' Baseball in three days in preparation for my trip, why I loved Moneyball before I could tell you what made the scene of Billy Beane's pursuit of Ricardo Ríncon so great, why I don't think I'll ever be able to watch Verlander's departure without crying. Even when it comes to fandoms that aren't my own, baseball moves me to tears more readily than almost anything in my life (have you seen the Mariners' send-off for broadcaster Rick Rizzs? If you haven't, you should).

This is the only sport that can make moments like that one on Saturday. This is the only sport where a 22-year-old rookie phenom, who was less than a year old when Verlander made his debut, can send off a living legend in the game.

"How can you not be romantic about baseball?" Everyone was asking themselves that after Verlander's start. I asked it again as Kevin McGonigle caught the first pitch from a young fan named Cece, the inventor of the McGonigoggles, and then again as Game 162 of the Tigers' season was nearing a close, when he treated an adoring Tigers crowd to a curtain call after an early pull.

It's about the passage of time. All of the lives lived not just for the guys on the field, but for everyone who's ever loved the game. There are fans who were there for all of Hank Greenberg's 1940 season, Norm Cash's 1961, Mark Fidrych's 1976, Alan Trammell's 1984, Justin Verlander's 2011, Miguel Cabrera's 2013, Tarik Skubal's 2024. Someday, I'll be able to say I was there for Kevin McGonigle's 2026.

Verlander said that one of the reasons making that last start was so important to him was that he wanted his daughter to remember it. It's about remembrance.

Seeing the forest for the trees

The Tigers' 2026 season is one that a lot of fans might prefer to forget (or, at least, only selectively remember). A terrible bullpen, a rash of injuries, another heartbreaking trade of a franchise staple, a losing record, and so, so many missed opportunities that led to it makes this year a failure in the record books.

And they're going to keep making us just as sad as they make us happy. It's almost guaranteed that I'll be critical of Scott Harris' offseason and may fall prey to some reactionary doom and gloom that I hope to have to take back, somewhat chastened but still skeptical.

Within the decades that pass between franchise legends and World Series rings are thousands of games that have the power to influence our emotions on any given day. There will always be times when we won't be able to see the forest for the trees.

But now, with the blow of the losing season slightly softened by poeticism of Verlander's last start, I find it impossible not to think about Cooperstown, and Buck O'Neill, and Norman Rockwell, and Christy Mathewson, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Hank Greenberg, and Kevin McGonigle. All of the stories, all of the life in between.

How lucky are we to love something so much, to live and grow alongside it and to know it was always there and always will be?

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