Houston — This one goes way back.
When John Hicks was 10 years old, he would sit out at the baseball field at Goochland High School in Virginia and watch his older brother Daniel and Justin Verlander dominate teams.
And for two at-bats Wednesday, Verlander gave young Hicks the equivalent of a high school swirly. He got him to tap meekly back to the mound and then struck him out on three pitches.
But in the top of the ninth, in a 1-1 game, Hicks got his redemption. He got one of the two mistakes Verlander made on this night, a center-cut fastball at 94 mph, and sent it on a line over the wall in left field, giving the Tigers a most improbable 2-1 victory over the Houston Astros.