Justin Verlander managed to squeak out a win over the Rangers last night with 133 pitches through 7.1 innings.  While it wasn’t the dominant performance I was expecting — he gave up 8 hits, 3 walks, and 4 runs — it was effective.  I then started wondering how many times I had seen Verlander pitch and was never so thankful that I maintain a blog of such things, as I just needed to do a simple search to figure it out.

It turns out, I’ve seen him pitch three times: most recently in September when I sought him out in Oakland, once in 2008 when he got shelled by the Red Sox,  and, most interesting of all, I was at his second start ever in 2005 when he lost to the Twins in the second game of a day-night double header.  As a bonus, he was on my fantasy team in 2007, which I didn’t remember.  It’s amusing to go back and read my thoughts when Verlander was a nobody and Mauer was someone more famous to me because he was a stud high school quarterback.

Having this blog comes in handy sometimes.