Skoob Returns To Detroit... You CAN Go Home Again

Tarik Skubal had 26 days to think about what it would be like to walk back into Comerica Park wearing a uniform that wasn't supposed to be his. On Friday night, he finally found out. Whether the sounds greeting him were cheers or boos was difficult to determine, although Skubal had a pretty good theory. With fans chanting “Skoob,” he figured they were probably cheering.

“I think I did a good job of keeping baseball, baseball,” Skubal said.

That may have been the plan, but plans have a funny way of disappearing when you return to the place where your entire professional career began, especially when you are facing the team that drafted you, developed you and watched you become a two-time Cy Young Award winner before trading you to Los Angeles less than a month ago.

The first Detroit batter, Gleyber Torres, didn't exactly help settle the nerves, doubling on Skubal's first pitch of the night. If there were butterflies somewhere inside the 29-year-old left-hander, apparently that was enough to dislodge them. Skubal settled down and proceeded to remind everyone in attendance why the Tigers had spent years building their rotation around him, retiring the next 12 batters he faced and striking out the side in the third.

“I think I did a good job of keeping baseball, baseball,” he said.

Eventually Detroit managed to put together a little offense, but even then Skubal limited the damage, allowing one run on four hits while striking out seven over six innings. The numbers were good. The setting was anything but routine.

“You know with the last name Skoob, you don’t know if they are boos or they’re cheering for you and I gotta assume they were cheering for me,” Skubal said. “That’s all I gotta say about that.”

He may have been joking, but there was plenty of affection mixed into the reception. A couple of young fans showed up wearing white Tigers jerseys bearing No. 29 and Skubal's name, topped off with Dodgers caps. It was perhaps the most appropriate fashion statement for a night when the home crowd had to simultaneously welcome back the pitcher it loved and root against him.

Freddie Freeman understood why.

“He was talking to everybody,” Freeman said. “I think he embraced it. He left everything he had for this organization, multiple Cy Youngs — he left it all for them. I think that's why he got so many cheers. I'm sure during the game they weren't too thrilled with all the strikeouts he was racking up, but it's hard to boo a man who gave you everything he had every five days.”

Skubal wasn't interested in making the evening about himself, however. He had a game to pitch, and the Dodgers had a game they badly needed to win after being swept in Atlanta and watching their cushion over the Braves for the second-best record in the National League shrink to a single game.

The Dodgers' offense, which had been anything but explosive during the Atlanta series, wasn't exactly interested in changing its personality in Detroit. Fortunately, Miguel Rojas and Freddie Freeman were willing to provide the necessary assistance.

Rojas delivered an RBI single to tie the game, and Freeman came through with two outs in the eighth, lining a single to center that scored Teoscar Hernández and gave Los Angeles a 2-1 lead. It wasn't a lot, but after three straight one-run losses in Atlanta, the Dodgers weren't about to complain about the size of the margin.

They have been living on margins all month.

Friday's victory marked another one-run decision in a month that has produced an astonishing number of them. The Dodgers have now played 14 one-run games in August, winning seven. At this point, Los Angeles fans may have added a few more gray hairs to their collection before September arrives.

The Dodgers, however, had one more bit of business to take care of, and that meant turning the ninth inning over to Tanner Scott.

After the events of Atlanta, nobody was exactly taking anything for granted.

Scott apparently decided that was somebody else's problem.

He needed only 13 pitches to retire Detroit in order, sandwiching a groundout between two strikeouts to secure his 20th save in 22 opportunities. There would be no ninth-inning drama, no walk-off, no late-game collapse and no reason for Dodgers fans to start looking for the nearest emergency exit.

Just three outs and a 2-1 victory.

For Skubal, however, the night was about considerably more than the final score. Roberts had watched the emotions surrounding his new pitcher throughout the evening and understood that there was one final piece of unfinished business.

“There was a lot of heavy heart, emotions,” Dave Roberts said, “so I think this was the last box he had to check.”

Skubal apparently wasn't quite ready to check it himself.

“He wanted to stay in, and I love that, I respect that,” Roberts said. “He felt he had some more in there, but I had my thoughts.”

The manager's thoughts prevailed, and Skubal's Detroit return ended after six innings with his new team holding the lead.

“I think with the last name Skoob, you don't know if they are boos or they're cheering for you,” Skubal had said earlier.

By the end of the night, it probably didn't matter.

The cheers had been heard. The boos, if there were any, had been heard too. Skubal had walked back onto the mound at Comerica Park wearing Dodger blue, faced the organization that had been his baseball home for his entire career and pitched well enough to help his new team walk away with a victory.

“We won,” Skubal said, “and that's what matters to me.”

It was a pretty good way to close the door on Detroit without slamming it.

Three games in Atlanta. Three one-run losses. Then one game in Detroit, another one-run decision and finally, the Dodgers on the right side of it.

Maybe Skubal was right.

Sometimes you really can go home again.

You just have to leave with the win.