I’ve been a baseball fan most of my life. Recently Justin Verlander called it a career after twenty-one seasons in the league, but what happened during his last game is what separates his last appearance from so many other ones.
Verlander had a stellar career and has a real shot at making the Hall of Fame. His accolades are undeniable as he is a multiple time World Series champion and All-Star. He’s won a Most Valuable Player award and totaled three no-hitters. His personal life includes his wife who is a former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, Kate Upton. The guy has it all right?
On top of everything that I mentioned above, he received another gift when he was removed from his last game and that is what I wanted to talk about. It is common for teams to provide an extra layer of respect and appreciation for players who are playing their last game for an organization or their career. The Detroit Tigers might have set the bar so high that future teams might not be able to compete with what they did for Justin.
On September 26, 2026, Verlander was on the mound for five plus innings before he was about to be pulled from the game. Every fan in the stadium and at home watching TV, recognized what they were witnessing. When time was called, everything changed when his seven-year-old daughter was seen running to the mound. The team had orchestrated this arrangement to allow her to be the last one to remove her day from a pitcher’s mound. If you haven’t seen the video, MLB has it on their site https://www.mlb.com/news/justin-verlander-final-mlb-start I will caution you, the emotion is raw. It gets to me when I process what is going on and especially when I see Justin completely breaking down.
This is a professional athlete in any definition of the term, and he completely loses control when he sees his daughter running out to him.
Based on everything we as boys were taught, he showed a weakness that we aren’t supposed to show right? Don’t cry. Don’t show emotion as a boy. What a load of BS we were taught.
Men should pursue a level of secure masculinity but rarely were we taught how to do this. When I see Verlander on that mound, in front of thousands of strangers, feeling his emotions and showing them to world, that screams secure masculinity to me. I haven’t heard or seen one comment ridiculing him for crying and that is the way that it should be. This was a man, ending an incredible career and being able to share it with the most important people to him in his whole life, his wife and kids.
Here are the questions that the rest of us mortal men should sit with. If a man like Justin Verlander can show us the emotions that he did in that video, why can’t we allow ourselves to do the same? Does it make us less as a man to cry or does it elevate us to secure men like him when we do? These are interesting things to consider when you are on a journey of growth so take as much time as you need to see and feel what you believe.
