Clayton Kershaw
Clayton Kershaw announced yesterday that this will be his last season as an MLB player. He's retiring as a Dodger, the only team he has ever played with. I'm sure there will be a lot of tribute pieces for him across sports media. I'll add a post that's just about my own personal memories of him, as a massive Dodgers fan who has followed his entire career since before he was even drafted.
Kershaw the draft prospect
I was a big prospects fanatic as a young fan. I bought the annual Baseball America Top-100 Prospects Handbook every year and would routinely check up on the Dodgers top prospects and speculate on about draft picks. There was a Dodgers scout.com forum and they had a big thread about who we should take with the 7th overall pick in 2006. The new draft meta back then, because of the popularity of Moneyball, was to take college pitchers due to their higher success rate. High school pitchers were very boom or bust and took much longer to develop on average. Nonetheless, even after hiring of analytics darling Paul DePodesta as GM, the Dodgers scouting department remained very old school. The consensus among the hardcore prospect heads was that we really wanted this Clayton Kershaw kid--the consensus #1 prep pitcher on the board. He had the highest upside out of everybody as a lefty flamethrower with a plus-plus curveball. But most people thought Kershaw wouldn't drop to 7.
Then draft day came... and FIVE pitchers were taken ahead of Kershaw (all of them college pitchers). He dropped to us! We got our guy!
Kershaw the chosen one
Okay, now he's a Dodgers draft pick but that doesn't guarantee anything. He still needs to refine himself and pitch well in the minors. He ends up posting astonishing numbers in the minors and within two years, establishes himself as the #1 overall prospect in the Dodgers system. He's our future ace! And we so badly need one. At this point in my life, I've never actually seen a homegrown Dodgers ace. We traded Pedro. Darren Dreifort got injured too much. Kevin Brown didn't count because he was an outside mercenary. Edwin Jackson wasn't consistent enough. Chad Billingsley was more of a #2. It's gotta be this kid, right?
The Matt Holiday game
The first game I got to see Kersh live was in 2009 in the first round NLDS game 2 against the St. Louis Cardinals. He pitched great with 6.2 innings allowing 2 earned runs but left the game on the hook for a loss because we couldn't score. We rallied to win in the ninth inning, with Matt Holiday's error being a huge catalyst. If you don't know what happened, you honestly have to see it--he literally lets the baseball doink him in the groin
The Cy Young award winner
2011 was a big lifestyle change year for me and I couldn't tune into Dodgers baseball the way I used to. The Dodgers weren't very good but Kershaw was killing it with a league leading ERA and strikeout rate. I watched all the highlights. He's finally the guy we always wanted him to be, 6 years ago. The prophecy was foretold! He wins his first Cy Young award at age 23.
The Best Pitcher in the World (and the massive burden it brings upon him)
2012-2014 Kerhsaw wins 2 more Cy Young awards, with one runner up to boot (he should've taken the 2012 year too, if you ask me). This is around the time when fans and media alike start to anoint Clayton Kershaw as the consensus best pitcher in all of baseball. He's the Ace of all Aces. He has a 300 strikeout season in 2015. He wins an ERA title in 2016.
With unprecedented success comes massive expectations in the post-season. The chosen one is supposed to carry you to World Series glory. Unfortunately, the story does not pan out the way the prophecy was foretold. We had some of our most painful postseason moments with Kershaw at the epicenter. I don't want to spend a lot of time describing them, we all remember them. Matt Adams. Daniel Murphy. Juan Soto and Anthony Rendon. Game 5 against (the cheating team that shall not be named). We heard all the labels about our chosen one--choker, underachiever, not clutch. We all defended him. In the end, whatever the conclusion is about his post-season legacy, he's still our guy. He handled every disappointment with grace and class.
Saving the day and throwing home
It's tied 2-2 in the World Series and the Dodgers are coming off a brutal game 4 loss where they literally dropped the ball and gave the Rays a walkoff win. It's Kershaw on the bump for game 5. The pressure is at its maximum with the perception of his postseason legacy at its absolute nadir following the 2019 collapse against the Nationals. At this point, Kershaw is not in his prime anymore but he's still very good. He delivers 6 strong innings allowing only 2 earned runs, punctuated by a signature moment of throwing out Manuel Margot stealing home in the third inning. That would've been the tying run that could've changed everything. Kershaw knew what to do and he made it look easy. He anchored us in our most dire time of need.
We end up winning that one and the next one and it's the first Dodgers World Series win in my lifetime. I remember the sheer joy on his face as he ran out from the bullpen to celebrate with his teammates. His legacy is secure. He brought us to the promised land.
Salute and farewell to the Greatest Dodgers player of all time.