Fulmer treats family, friends to milestone win

ARLINGTON — Michael Fulmer knew he’d have a lot of family and friends driving from Oklahoma City to watch him pitch on Sunday — maybe 40-50 people, he guessed, from texts and calls he received. He also knew he had a flight back to Detroit to catch after the game.

“I told the ones that texted me, ‘We have to catch a plane, so I’ll try to come up for like 10 minutes,'” Fulmer said the day before. “But I’ve gotta see everybody.”

As he turned around and raised his arms at the game’s end, having thrown his first professional shutout in a 7-0 win over the Rangers — the team he grew up watching — everybody could see him. He raised his arms and pointed over the Tigers’ dugout.

“I could hear them between every inning, with me walking off and me coming back on the mound,” he said after the game. “It gets me going a little bit. I think I started the game with a little more adrenaline because I could hear those guys. They came down to the bullpen [during warmups], and I hear them yelling.”

This was already a storybook season for the 23-year-old right-hander, now the first Tigers rookie to throw a shutout since Justin Verlander blanked the Royals on May 22, 2006. To do that in front of those closest to him, in a ballpark he remembers sitting in as a teenager, was almost too much.

“This is the only field that I’ve actually been to to watch games,” said Fulmer, who was too young to watch Nolan Ryan pitch but idolized him and his style. “A lot people back …

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