god am i jinxing him, but the rookie is making one hell of a case for the cy young. hes been great all year, but hes been unbelievable, unheard of good, lately.

so the question is, is he now detroit's biggest star?

keep in mind, popularity of the sports goes: nfl, mlb, nba, nhl.

lidstrom should be it, being one of the all time great nhl defensemen, but its nhl. it would have been hard to make a case even for yzerman.

billups would be the guy for the pistons, but im not sure.

lions: not even close.

so is it possible verlander is detroit sports' biggest star? i guess pudge could also be in the argument, but i think in a very short time verlander is going to be a very big sports star.

pretty crazy that even 5 months ago hardly any one cared about the tigers or had heard verlander's name before.

I was thinking along the same lines during the game today. He's just been amazing. I cant recall a "bad" game he's had. In about 2 or 3 years if the Tigers keep winning, he'll deffently be a huge star in the city.

Yzerman, although retired, still holds that distinction.

i guess it does depend. yzerman is still big in the city, but most people have never heard of him in america.

hill was more popular outside detroit than he was in detroit.

but if we're playing by your rules, i think barry is still detroit's most popular athlete.

This doesn't really answer the question, but it's amazing to me that as well as Verlander has pitched, when the voters vote at the end of the year he might not even be considered the best rookie pitcher in the AL Central. I think Liriano gets more love - and he certainly deserves love - but I think Verlander has been more complete. The amizing thing is that while people are concerned about wearing him out, he almost seems to me like he's getting better as the year goes on. Today for example, hitting his career high for strikeouts.

Anyhow, I think Verlander has the potential to be the biggest star in Detroit, but I don't think he's there yet. He isn't even the consensus star or fan favorite on the team, let alone the rest of the city.

I think Rip could become the fan favorite and the biggest star.

He's my Tiger bitches. Back away. Go suck off Monroe.

Gladly......er I mean, I can like more than one.

^^LMAO.

I can't wait until Verlander is doing Blue Steel on billboards across the Detroit area...