For Tarik Skubal, it doesn’t feel like long ago he was going to games at T-Mobile Park in Seattle and savoring the environment of what he thought was the coolest place in the world.

He’d get goosebumps watching Edwin Diaz come out to close a game for the Mariners while he was merely a collegiate pitcher continuing his journey just down the road.

Now Skubal, 28, takes the field at T-Mobile Park for the fourth time as an MLB pitcher, but his first in the postseason in a major opportunity for the reigning Cy Young Award winner to put his Detroit Tigers up 2-0 in the ALDS.

Though he’s an Arizona native, Seattle is a meaningful place for Skubal, who played summer ball in the Pacific Northwest as a teenager before spending four years at Seattle U., a small private school not far from downtown

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