LAKELAND, Fla. _ His work is done. The class begins.
Daniel Norris takes off his Detroit Tigers practice jersey and stands behind the bullpen, wearing a gray T-shirt with cutoff sleeves, his wild bushy hair spilling from the back of his cap. He leans against a fence and watches Justin Verlander pitch, like a student who sinks into the back of the room but tries to notice everything.
Verlander misses a pitch and blurts out his displeasure. Verlander snags the ball from the catcher, fumes a little _ he's a perfectionist, even in spring training. He takes a deep breath, clears his head and buries four perfect pitches.
Norris has a tendency to react the same way. He gets mad and frustrated when the ball misbehaves and doesn't go where he wants. "The difference is, Verlander gets ticked about a bad pitch and it doesn't affect his next one," Norris said.
Sometimes, a bad pitch lingers for Norris. "I'll be like, dang it," Norris said. "Then, I'm thinking about that again _ don't do that again, don't do that again _ I throw it, and I did it again."
That's why Norris is here, standing in the background and hanging around after practice. Verlander is one of the best pitchers in team history, a 34-year-old veteran who ranks second in strikeouts (2,197), third in winning percentage (.620) and seventh in wins (173). His success is the ultimate benchmark for Norris and the rest of the young pitchers.
He's a workhorse. A Cy Young Award winner. He's an MVP and a six-time All-Star. The $28 million man who has pitched 12 seasons for the Tigers.
"He's a future Hall of Famer," left-hander Matt Boyd said. "If you want to be the best, you have to follow the best."
The legacy reaches beyond Verlander's success on the field, and he is having a profound influence on the next generation of pitchers in the organization because of it, including Norris, Boyd and Michael Fulmer.
"I'm thinking long term with those guys," Verlander said. "All of these guys are all really different but they can all be really, really good."
