Jen Steele

For most of his career, Justin Verlander pitched angry. It was his routine To step onto the field in full snarl. In the last start of his career, his 7-year-old daughter walked out to the mound to take him out of the game. He says she’s the reason he had one of the best seasons of his career at 39, when he stopped pitching out of anger and started pitching out of love. Anger worked really well for most of his career. By the time of his surgery, he had Two Cy Youngs, an MVP, and three no-hitters. But after missed nearly two seasons after COVID and Tommy John surgery. Looking back this week, he said: “Once my daughter was born and I went away for COVID and had Tommy John surgery and got to spend so much time with her and the family, it just really changed me to the core. To the point that when I came back in 2022 and tried to go back into my old routine, it felt fake to me.” “So I started changing things. I would just use the love that she would give me. I would leave for the park and there was this little girl and it didn’t matter what I was going to do. I’m not going to put my headphones on and be angry after that. I can’t.” Too often, we create a caricature of competing. We think, I’m wired this way...I need this...I can only do it this way... The best competitors are both/and. They realize that as Olympic champion swimmer Ryan Murphy told me, “You need multiple sources of motivation.” Sometimes, anger or intensity works. Other times, love, exploration, and joy. And they can change over a career or even shorter period of time. There are multiple ways to the top. There are multiple ways to fuel the pursuit. Verlander didn’t lose his competitive streak by letting go of the anger. “The competition. I love competing. I love preparing.” But he found a different path, a different perspective, that felt more authentic to him as family changed him. And it still worked. “I would leave for the park and there was this little girl and it didn’t matter what I was going to do.” He still cared. He still competed like hell. But the start was no longer a verdict on who he was. He had unconditional love, win or lose. Today, we saw the last start of a generation and type of pitcher we might not see for a while. A throwback of sorts. And he battled injury to come back to Detroit for one final start, 5.1 innings, 91 pitches. 6 strikeouts. And his daughter, Genevieve Verlander, walking to the mound to take him out of the game. Asked what he’d remember about that final Cy Young at 39, he said: “I will always kind of remember this Cy Young as looking back at the growth of me as a father and as a person.” His career started with him pitching angry. It ended with his daughter walking him off the mound.