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Boston Red Sox pitching legend Luis Tiant has died at the age of 83 “Dancing With the Stars” brings funk, boogie and a gutsy backflip to the ballroom with a “Soul Train”-themed episode.

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CLEVELAND – It's not just the things that make Tarik Skubal the best starter in baseball. Although it helps to hit 100 mph as a lefty, follow that with a nasty changeup and throw in a slider that's as fast as mortals throw fastballs.

That's what he does for the Detroit Tigers when he's on the mound, in the dugout and, most memorably, walking from the mound to the dugout. However, ask him to recount his increasingly meme-worthy moments with competitive howls and gestures, and the Tigers' ace draws a blank.

“Yeah, that was…” he began Monday night after pitching the game of his life to help his club tie the Guardians in the ALDS. “I don’t really know where I’ve been in situations like that.”

For the very best among us, the distance between reality and euphoria is as great as the distance to Mars, and when the world's most accomplished athletes are asked to recall a detail in that space, they fail.

On the one hand, they are used up. Mostly about the journey that so few of us ever get to take.

Skubal is the leading candidate for the American League's Cy Young Award, and he's gotten to this point and stage because he combines an arm from the sky with an accountant's eye for detail and a sergeant's enthusiasm for routine. This way he can retell a pitch sequence from a month ago.

EXPERIENCE THE GAME AGAIN: Kerry Carpenter stuns the Guardians with a dramatic HR in the 9th, giving the Tigers a 3-0 win in Game 2

Or the last hit he had against a high-hitting third baseman, like he did Monday night when he mentioned how well the Guardians' José Ramírez hit him.

But these are the details stored in the left hemisphere of the brain, where math harmonizes with science and logic and where the strategy for attacking batsmen is stored. The right side, so to speak, controls the fist pumps and the guttural and incipient cries of humanity that signal relief.

Or elation.

Or both.

There is power in this noise and in the energy needed to create it. Skubal's teammates absolutely hear it.

“It's unbelievable,” said Kerry Carpenter, who could have used the same word to describe his series-changing, two-out, two-strike, three-run home run in the top of the ninth inning. “His emotions…he’s our leader. Every inning he did out there — even when he got in trouble — no one in our dugout thought he wasn’t going to get out of there.”

The escapes unleash Skubal's most epic primal calls. Or his most diabolical reactions to opposing crowds. Not since Bill Laimbeer has a Detroit athlete left the field with such crackling – and cackling – disdain.

After escaping runners in the corners with one out in the sixth, Skubal walked – no, strutted – to the dugout with his head held high, his arms outstretched and his hands waving “Light up!”

As in: Give it to me. Everything you have. I will soak up your mockery, your boos, and your contempt… and use it as fuel.

When skill and work give players a chance in the big leagues, confidence and composure give them a chance to stick and then make hay and then make history, not that Skubal broke any records Monday night. Rather, his imprint is more ethereal, a penetrating spirit, and his teammates embrace it.

How good was Skubal? Tarik Skubal delivered one of the Detroit Tigers' most dominant postseasons ever

“The way he fires up our team and the way he comes out and executes and gets ground balls when he needs it and gets strikeouts when he needs it, he's fun to watch,” Carpenter said , “and I'm glad he's on my team and he's my leader.”

That's what you hear from a man in the Tigers' clubhouse, and especially in a corner occupied by the Tigers' manager.

“When you're watching,” AJ Hinch said, “you kind of wonder, 'When's the big moment?' “When is the big strikeout?” “When is the big pitch?” “How playful will he be with the crowd, especially on the road?”

Playful?

That's probably not a word the crowd would use, but then again, it's hard to know what's going on in Skubal's brain while he does it. Mainly because he doesn't know himself.

“I’ll be honest,” he said with a laugh, addressing the crowd about the motion, “I don’t know what that was. I don't know what that was. I’ve never done that in my life.”

Skubal grew embarrassed when asked what he was thinking — and what he's thinking in general — as he leaves the mound after escaping a traffic jam in a high-leverage moment.

“I probably shouldn't say any bad words with the cameras on me and the kids watching, but it was just emotions, raw emotions,” he said.

As for the environment at Progressive Field, where everything was on the line?

“It was great,” he said. “I think Cleveland fans, it was incredible to play in that environment, hostile, all that stuff that as a kid you dream about playing and pitching in front of.”

He pitched like that. That was easy to see. And for everyone on the Tigers, and for those of us who view pitchers as solo artists, it's easy to sense that Skubal is forcing a rethink. He may not be a one-man show, but this team is different when he's a part of the action, both big and small.

“He wants to lead this team and he does,” Hinch said.

Where does this lead? On to the next game, for now. Skubal made sure of that, even if he can't remember every tense and thrilling moment of his performance.

Contact Shawn Windsor: [email protected]. Follow him @shawnwindsor.

On By John Fenwick

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