I remember standing in the bathroom of my apartment when the news finally came through that the Tigers had traded Justin Verlander. The final light of the era of Tigers baseball that defined my adolescence and early adulthood had been extinguished.

No longer a starry-eye dreamer, I knew it was time. All things must end. And while the team itself crumbled into ruin in 2017 and spent years in darkness, it didn’t end badly with Verlander. He parted with the team and the fans on good terms. He went off and continued to flourish in his second act. Won a couple titles, a couple Cy Young awards. Threw a third no hitter.

He’s nearing the end. Four years ago he was great. Three years ago he was very good. The last two years he’s been good and bad, but he closed strong in 2025.

There’s no expectation he will be an ace when he gets back on the mound at Comerica Park (the last year we’ll call it that?). That’s not what this is. But he is likely to be useful, a complement to a rotation led by the best pitcher in the world and newly fortified by a bona fide star.

I’ve worried out loud that too much time away would end with him wearing an Astros cap in Cooperstown. I tweeted last year that I was hoping they’d trade for him at the deadline.

Verlander has nothing left to prove. He’s one of, if not, the best pitchers of his era. An easy, no argument first-ballot Hall-of-Famer. There is nothing his resume lacks.

But resume and legacy are different. Coming back to Detroit, to play in front of the fan base that raised him and on the field where it all started, has meaning even if his career would be complete without it.

I guess that’s how I feel about it too. I didn’t need to see Verlander in a Tigers uniform again for everything that happened between 2006 and 2017 to have meaning. That part of my life has been over for a long time. But I will admit to getting caught up in it.

So much of the meaning and joy in my life between 2006 and 2017 came from the Tigers and the part of my life I had built around them. That’s no longer true. I enjoyed watching them chase down a wild card at the end of 2024 and I was seated for the playoffs last year even after the collapse, but my life is something different now. When they lost in Seattle, I barely felt it. Ah, well, what could have been. When they lost in 2009 and 2011 and 2013, it punched me in the ribs.

These days I see the world through the eyes of three people between 5 and 7. Two of them are aware of sports but have very little interest in them. But one of them is starting to care a little bit. She’s 5. She likes watching on TV. She’s aware enough of what’s going on that I was thinking I might take her to a lazy afternoon game this summer and see how it goes. If it turns out she makes baseball part of her life, I can give her the gift of saying she saw one of the greats in person when she was little.

Seeing Verlander in the Old English D won’t mean anything to her this summer. It might never mean anything to her. But someday it might.

And being in the stands of Comerica Park, watching Justin Verlander one last time, offering the family burden of Tigers fandom to my daughter, I imagine I will find meaning there.