DETROIT (AP) \u2014 Justin Verlander got an unexpected hook in his major league finale, when the 7-year-old daughter of the pitcher and model Kate Upton came to the mound with Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch in the sixth inning of Saturday’s game against the Pittsburgh Pirates.<\/p>\n
After Brandon Lowe hit a foul popup starting the sixth, Hinch walked from the dugout toward the plate and pointed toward the seats. Genevieve Verlander, wearing a Tigers jersey with her dad’s name and number, sprinted to the mound and hugged her father, who reached down to embrace her and started shaking and sobbing.<\/p>\n
Hinch joined them about 25 seconds later for another hug, and then Verlander was surrounded by Tigers teammates who came to the mound. The 43-year-old right-hander, a 10-time All-Star and three-time Cy Young Award winner over 21 major league seasons, left the field for the final time, holding his daughter’s hand, as the Comerica Park crowd gave him a standing ovation.<\/p>\n
Upton, holding 1-year-old son Bellamy, joined Justin and Genevieve for a group hug on the warning track in front of the Tigers dugout, and Justin high-fived teammates and doffed his cap to the crowd before descending the dugout steps with his family.<\/p>\n
In all, there was a 5 1\/2-minute wait until reliever Tyler Kinley threw his first pitch.<\/p>\n
Verlander allowed two runs and five hits in 5 1\/3 innings with one walk and six strikeouts in his 91-pitch outing. He was making his second start of the year and first since March 30 in a season derailed by a sore hip and hamstring injury.<\/p>\n
He entered 266-159 in his career and finished with a 3.33 ERA and 3,560 strikeouts, eighth on the career list.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh’s fifth batter, 20-year-old shortstop Konnor Griffin, had not been born when Verlander made his debut for the Tigers on July 4, 2005.<\/p>\n
Verlander received a standing ovation when he headed to the bullpen to warm up, and a longer one when he returned to the dugout before the first pitch. Academy Award winning J.K. Simmons, a longtime Tigers fan, announced him as part of Detroit\u2019s starting lineup.<\/p>\n
Verlander took the field for the first inning to another ovation \u2014 this one alone on the field as his teammates stayed in the dugout to give him the spotlight.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh took a 2-0 lead against Verlander on solo homers by Lowe in the fourth and Nick Gonzales in the fifth, the first on a 89.7 mph fastball and the second on a curve.<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full MLB coverage here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT (AP) \u2014 Justin Verlander got an unexpected hook in his major league finale, when the 7-year-old daughter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2386],"tags":[2082,5,1751,147,53,2583,99196,388,25644,4,10608,9500,9501,9496,9497,9498,36947,594,1106,99195],"class_list":["post-814997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-detroit-tigers","tag-a-j-hinch","tag-baseball","tag-brandon-lowe","tag-detroit","tag-detroit-tigers","tag-detroittigers","tag-genevieve-verlander","tag-justin-verlander","tag-kate-upton","tag-mlb","tag-nick-gonzales","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-product-40792-ap-michigan-sports-only","tag-product-40809-ap-pennsylvania-sports-only","tag-tigers","tag-tyler-kinley","tag-verlander-final-game"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}