Justin Verlander’s parents to be at Strawberry Festival

Richard and Kathy Verlander, the parents of Detroit Tigers ace pitcher Justin Verlander, will be at the National Strawberry Festival in Belleville for all three days to sign their book, “Rocks Across the Pond.”
They will also have Justin’s All Star ring with them for people to see and try on.
When Justin was a child growing up in Manakin-Sabot, VA, he and his father would often play catch in the yard, which lay adjacent to a pond. On one of those occasions, Verlander’s father told him that if he practiced hard enough, he would someday be able to throw a rock clear across the pond. His father threw first, hurling his rock three-quarters of the length of the pond before splashing down in the water. Justin took his turn and launched his rock clear across the pond, hitting a tree on the opposite side and rolling back into the water. He was ten years old.
That experience, along with many others, is what inspired the parents of American League Cy Young Award winner and Most Valuable Player of the Year Justin Verlander to write “Rocks Across the Pond,” a perspective on the joys and pitfalls of raising a young, up-and-coming star athlete.
Richard and Kathy Verlander observe that there’s really no roadmap for parents.
“This much was clear to us from the start in 1989 as parents of then 6-year-old Justin … With little background or experience in any type of organized sports ourselves we had no idea about the turn our lives were about to take when a neighbor from across the street suggested that our son Justin should ‘sign up’ for Little League Baseball. In our wildest dreams we never would have imagined that 20 years later we would be receiving the ‘Little League Parents of The Year Award’ in Willamsport, PA. This is an honor bestowed annually on the parents of major league stars that played Little League Baseball.
“This book was written in hopes that other parents raising young athletes can gain something from our expe¬rience and look back as we have, knowing that Baseball is a great metaphor for life and that lessons learned last a lifetime.”
“Rocks Across the Pond” is a 9”x12” hard cover with 112 pages, a color pictorial. ISBN: 978-0-9850375-0-5, $29.95. Published by Dementi Milestone Publishing, www.justinverlanderbook .