The Last Stand Of Modern Warriors

In baseball history, only four pitchers have won multiple World Series and Cy Young awards while also pitching multiple no-hitters. Two of the four — two very different men — reached the end of their careers over the weekend. Both of them authored their endings. Neither went out quietly, because that’s not how strong men exit the stage.

Max Scherzer is a total psychopath. At every stage of his time on the mound, he lived up to that reputation. He yelled at his coaches. He fought with his teammates. He practiced obsessively. He played when he was injured. He threw fits over things like being congratulated by his teammates. He famously argued against being pulled, usually successfully, every time a manager attempted to remove him from the game. He did exactly that in his final start for the Toronto Blue Jays, his seventh team.

Justin Verlander is also known for his intensity, if not for being insane. He couldn’t approach retirement the same way, going out with the same sort of game Scherzer did. Instead, he was forced to engineer his final pitch, cutting rehab early for a hip injury and a damaged hamstring to take the field one last time. He re-signed with the Detroit Tigers, his first team, just so he could throw his last ball wearing the same uniform he wore when he threw his first. It was a different grand finale, one featuring not an argument with his manager, but his daughter rushing to the mound to hug him as his career came to a close.

To suggest that these men should have gone gently into that good night is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of our modern-day warriors. These were not surgeons or accountants starting the next phase of their lives. For such men, it would be ridiculous to mark the transition by screaming at a patient or attempting to do a tax return while drugged and recovering from surgery.

For Scherzer and Verlander, though, their careers were spent in battle. They didn’t just have to defeat the opposing players and teams, but also their own bodies and minds. When the odds were stacked against them, when their shoulders were shrieking in agony, when they doubted themselves, they pushed through. There’s a reason they both have the numbers that they do, and a large part of that is not being the strong, silent type but instead the strong, fierce type.

To suggest that such men quietly bow out without a final hurrah is beyond ludicrous. It goes against human nature. The winning Super Bowl quarterback doesn’t shy away from celebration. The coach who engineers a late comeback may give credit to the team, but he doesn’t bite his tongue. Hell, even the man armed with nothing but some tools and a YouTube tutorial proclaims his dominance after he fixes the water heater on a late Sunday night. It’s what men do.

What men do not do is try to shush a fellow man, particularly a fellow man celebrating his retirement as a champion. We honor him. We aspire to be him. We study how he coupled intense mental and physical preparation with his God-given talent. We think about the competitions in our own lives and how we can apply the lessons learned from the warriors.

Neither Scherzer nor Verlander were demanding credit for just doing their jobs. This wasn’t a situation where a player gets way too hyped for making a play he’s supposed to make. There’s a difference between a regular first baseman gloating over a routine stop when his club is down by eight runs, and generational talents saying their goodbyes as they prepare to take off dirty uniforms for the last time.

Scherzer and Verlander are such talents. They battled Balrog and came out victorious. They spent decades punishing themselves in service to their teams and fanbases. Their retirement parties didn’t happen in a breakroom with punch and cake; they happened on national broadcasts. That they took the time to pump their fists in the air and say “fight, fight, fight” one more time is a testament to the strength they embody, not an indulgence in decadence. Instead of critiquing them, we should be glad such men with chests still exist at a time when we too often castrate the geldings and bid them to be fruitful.

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Rich Cromwell is a writer living in Northwest Arkansas. He produces the Cookin’ Up a Story podcast, which you can listen to here. You can also follow him on X: @rcromwell4