Eduardo Valencia launches a walk off home run to cap Justin Verlander day in Detroit

We watched Justin Verlander warming up in the bullpen, wondering what we were going to see here on Saturday as he prepared for the last major league start of his incredible career. Eventually he came out and made his walk to the dugout. JK Simmons introduced the Tigers. The opening chords of Til I Collapse sounded, the 43-year-old Verlander took the mound in the throwback Adidas, which he joked later he'd told Kevin McGonigle and Max Clark were older than they were, and the moment had arrived.

I couldn't help feel some trepidation about this. On the one hand, this is Justin Verlander, and he's not going out there to embarrass himself. On the other hand, even pitching well he might just get lit up early having not pitched since the first week of the season. We just had to have faith in JV, and that's really never been hard. It was a little harder today, but we should've known better.

Verlander retired Ryan O'Hearn on a fly out to left to start things off. In classic JV style, he then popped up Brandon Lowe and Brian Reynolds for a snappy 1-2-3 first inning. The veteran, keeping things efficient early to be able to pitch deep into the game.