Rodney visits Detroit: It's 'my hometown'

DETROIT -- A decade has passed since Fernando Rodney called Comerica Park his home ballpark. He was in his first full season as a Major League closer a decade ago, taking the ball for a Tigers club that had to rework its bullpen.

He has pitched for nine teams since then, now working middle relief for the visiting A’s at age 42. But as he rolls into Motown, possibly for one last time depending on where his career takes him next year, the city still holds a special place for him.

“Right now, I feel like I’m home,” Rodney said as he sat in the visiting dugout Saturday afternoon before Oakland's 4-1 victory over the Tigers. “I feel like I’m back home when I come here. I feel like I’m in my hometown, Detroit. A lot of things have changed, but we keep playing.”

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This is where it all started for Rodney, who made his Major League debut for the Tigers on May 4, 2002. He took the loss that night in the Metrodome against Ron Gardenhire’s Minnesota Twins.

He had brief stints for the Tigers that year and next, missed the 2004 season recovering from Tommy John surgery, spent the end of the 2005 season closing, then forged a role alongside Joel Zumaya as the setup relievers behind Todd Jones on the AL champion 2006 Tigers.

Rodney earned the full-time closer’s job after Jones retired, beating out free-agent signing Brandon Lyon for the job in 2009. He led AL pitchers with 65 appearances that year, saved 37 games in 38 chances and helped the Tigers to within a game of the division crown with a team that had a negative run differential.

That 2009 team had a seven-game division lead on Labor Day, then saw Gardenhire’s Twins erase it with a late-season charge to force a one-game tiebreaker. The Twins won on a 12th-inning RBI single; Rodney took the loss, but threw three innings and 48 pitches in the process in his final game as a Tiger, with free agency looming. Then-Tigers manager Jim Leyland called him a warrior for the outing.

“He gave me the chance,” Rodney said. “But I felt good. I kept saying, ‘Yes, one more.’ Every inning he’d ask me how I feel. I say I feel good.”

Never did Rodney imagine he would still be pitching a decade later. He leads all active pitchers with 912 games pitched, 325 saves and 582 games finished. He has more strikeouts (908) than innings pitched (899 2/3).

“I think I found a way how to prepare myself to play every day,” Rodney said. “Every player tells themselves if they play 10 years in their career, it’s good. But you don’t know what 11 or 12 is going to be. It’s a lot. But I feel good. Maybe I’m not pitching consistently, but I feel good.”

He drew interest from the Tigers as a free agent after the 2017 season, but Detroit balked at a multiyear deal. He signed with the Twins, who traded him to Oakland last August. But he had a supporter in Gardenhire, who worked with him on the coaching staff with the Diamondbacks in 2017.

“He’s the greatest guy in the world,” Gardenhire said, “and you know what, I tip my hat to anybody who can do what he does. He stays in great shape. I talked to him when we were in Arizona together about his offseason program, what he does. He runs on the beach and has this heavy ball that he throws. He just maintains.

“He’s one of those guys that you’re lucky enough to have been on the field with this guy. I was on the same team with him. I got to watch him from the other side. He’s just a really cool guy who loves baseball, and you tip your cap when anybody can pitch as long as he has and do what he’s done.”