LAKELAND, Fla. – Justin Verlander used to live in this central Florida city. He bought a place on the south end of town shortly after the Tigers drafted him in 2004 and spent his offseasons here for over a decade, making the drive across town to Joker Marchant Stadium to conduct the throwing portion of his rigorous offseason training.
As he drove into the complex on Tuesday afternoon to meet with the Tigers’ front office and finalize his return on a one-year contract, that sense of familiarity in what was once routine all came back to him.
“Really surreal,” Verlander said Thursday morning. “I think the weirdest part is driving into Lakeland. I haven’t been back in Lakeland. I spent a lot of time here, lived here for the majority of my career in Detroit in the offseason. Coming back here was interesting, and it brought back a lot of memories and emotions.
“You walk into the locker room, and [Tarik Skubal] is showing me around the locker room, and all of a sudden he’s like, ‘Hey, there you are on the wall.’ It’s like, that’s cool, you know? So yeah, there’s a lot of emotions running through, and I haven’t really processed it all yet.”
It’ll be a prep run for what Verlander will experience in a couple months when he returns to Detroit and takes the mound at Comerica Park. He has been back several times as a visitor since his trade to the Astros in August 2017, but experiencing it on the home side is a completely different experience.
It’s not just the years that separate the last time he experienced that. Detroit is a different city now; the turnaround that began during his first Tigers tenure has flourished into a new-look downtown, from the skyline beyond the outfield to the neighborhood surrounding the park. And just as Detroit has changed, so has Verlander. With his 43rd birthday coming next week, he’s admittedly a different pitcher, but also a different person.
“Things were really starting to accelerate and change by the time I left,” Verlander said. “I think the thing that sticks out to me most is the way the fans embraced us, particularly in 2006. To buy a ticket and come to a ballgame was a huge expense for a lot of those fans, but it was also a getaway and something to celebrate and cheer for, for a city that was really struggling. That really meant a lot to me.
”I think looking back, I was so young. And now, my life has changed so much. I’ve got two kids, I’ve been married for a while now, and I’m just a different person. And to come back around and have another chance as a different man, to embrace the city that I grew up in front of? People look at athletes and think that they’ve got it all figured out. I look back and I was 22 years old, 23, 24 early on. I was a kid, just trying to figure things out. Happened to be really good at baseball, you know? But now, it’s such a different experience, and I’m in a different place and just excited to re-experience Detroit in a mindset.”
Verlander had thought about it for a while. As soon as last season ended with the Giants, he said he thought about the next step. And with the Tigers coming off a second consecutive postseason run, he thought about coming back. So he reached out to Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris to see if there could be a fit.
”Didn’t seem like there was much room for me,” Verlander said. “We had some very candid conversations, Scott and I. Unfortunately, there were some things that happened recently where some innings that I think they were planning on aren’t going to be filled.”
Those innings were going to go to Reese Olson if his right shoulder held up. When it became clear a couple weeks ago that Olson would need shoulder surgery and miss the season, the conversations restarted.
Verlander has been where Olson is, that talented young pitcher in Detroit. Back then, Verlander talked about pitching into his 40s, using Nolan Ryan’s career as an inspiration. And now, fulfilling that path has brought him back, pairing him with another pitcher in Skubal on a similar path.
As Verlander looked over his familiar No. 35 Tigers jersey, one reporter asked him, “Is it the same size you wore nine years ago?”
Verlander paused for a moment to think about it.
”Yeah, I think it is,” he said, somewhat surprised.
As he put it on, it fit perfectly. So much has changed, but some things remain the same.