DETROIT -- First, he was “Little Guy.” But as Trevor Bauer transitioned into middle school, his father, Warren, began calling him “Medium-Sized Guy.” That didn’t quite have the same ring to it. They started calling each other names, like “Bonehead.” But it was “Buster” that stuck.

Don’t let the nicknames fool you. Bauer certainly puts a lot of his time and effort toward pitching, taking as little as a handful of days off at the end of each season before he starts prepping for the next year. But never has he failed to show the importance of his family.

It’s a relationship that also grew through sports (with a background of engineering, of course). Warren turned Bauer into an enormous Duke basketball fan at a young age and Bauer ended up teaching his father a lot about pitching. Through each stage of Bauer's baseball career, Warren has been by his side, even if it meant making a 21-hour trek from the Los Angeles area to Houston to train during summer break in high school.

“He would always make the drive out with me, a long drive, and we made it in my black Mazda truck,” Bauer said. “We called it the ‘Buster Buggy.’ We call each other ‘Buster,’ so it’s the ‘Buster Buggy.’”

When looking back on the years and countless memories he’s made with his father, Bauer remembered this drive to be his favorite. When the two would finally make it to their final destination in Texas, they’d spend each day of the week working on baseball, but the weekends were free. So, Warren would do his best to make sure they had something to do. One day they decided to catch a play downtown, but they couldn’t find the theater.

“The lady on the phone was saying, ‘Oh, it’s at the cross streets of this and this,’” Bauer recalled. “And of course, we’re not familiar with Houston. So he’s trying to hold the phone to his ear and drive, and scribbles notes as he’s driving and so he writes down the cross streets, Texas Street and Prairie Street, and gets off the phone and everything’s fine.”

Little did Warren know that he just made a mistake he’d hear about for years to come.

“We get downtown and he’s like, ‘Can you read me [the directions], I don’t remember,’” Bauer said. “And I look at the paper and it says, ‘Teaxas and Pararie’ and I just rip on him all the time since then.

“But that’s like a perfect microcosm of what my dad is. He’s like constantly coming up with ideas, multi-tasking, doing a bunch of stuff at one time, more so worried about the outcome than the details. I just always rip on him all the time for ‘Teaxas and Pararie.’”

The Buster Buggy was Warren’s mode of transportation for over a decade longer. But on Christmas last year, Bauer surprised him with a new truck and a trip to Iceland, one of his father’s bucket list destination spots.

“My dad’s always wanted to go to Yellowstone and Iceland,” Bauer said. “The year before, I got them Yellowstone.”

His parents texted him Friday as they pushed back from the gate and headed to the runway to embark on the trip they’ve waited nearly six months for.

What was once a 1,500-mile journey by car from California to Texas for Warren to support Bauer’s dream of becoming a professional baseball player, suddenly turned into a 4,200-mile flight to a dream location all because of his son, who texted them back from the Detroit Tigers' visiting clubhouse, wishing them a safe trip.

Bauer will be on the mound for Father’s Day against the Tigers. During all Father’s Day games, for the fourth consecutive year, players wore specially-designed New Era caps to raise awareness and funds for the fight against prostate cancer. Players also had the option to wear Stance multi-pattern blue-dyed socks. MLB will again donate 100% of its royalties from the sales of specialty caps and apparel emblazoned with the symbolic blue ribbon – a minimum $300,000 collective donation – to the Prostate Cancer Foundation and Stand Up To Cancer.

This effort also includes the annual Prostate Cancer Foundation “Home Run Challenge,” which has given fans the chance to make a one-time monetary donation or pledge for every home run hit by their favorite MLB Clubs during the time period of Saturday, June 1st through Father’s Day, Sunday, June 16th, all the while tracking where their team stacks up in a “Team vs. Team” competition. Every dollar donated through the Home Run Challenge goes to PCF to fund critical research to defeat prostate cancer. As of June 13th, more than $1.26 million has been pledged via the Home Run Challenge in 2019. Since inception, the Home Run Challenge has raised more than $51 million for PCF, the world’s leading philanthropic organization funding and accelerating prostate cancer research.

Founded in 1993, Prostate Cancer Foundation has funded nearly $800 million of cutting-edge research by 2,200 scientists at 220 leading cancer centers in 22 countries around the world. Because of PCF’s commitment to ending death and suffering from prostate cancer, the death rate is down more than 52% and 1.5 million men are alive today as a result. PCF research now impacts 67 forms of human cancer by focusing on immunotherapy, the microbiome, and food as medicine. Learn more at pcf.org.