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On so many fall nights over these Octobers, in dark arenas sometimes big enough for a man and his baseball crusade, Clayton Kershaw had seen them coming for him. They were smart and honorable men with good intentions who cared for him and shared his crusade. He would trust them about anything: his well-being, his career. They could borrow your car. They could take care of their children.
However, they could not have the baseball in their hand.
They would get to the pitcher’s mound, having come all that way, and usually they would have brought with them a solid justification, not always, but usually, and more or less at the time a decision had to be made: one of them was going to I have to go, alone. Clayton Kershaw would nod and leave. Not always, but usually.
On the good nights and the bad nights, on the nights that the driving lines were caught and the nights that they spun up to the fence, on the nights that he thought he could pitch forever and … well, just there were those kinds of nights. When it was cool, it had to stay cool. When it wasn’t, I had to fix it. He had to stay and fix things. Please let him stay and correct him.
One day he will have to look back on everything, years and years of this, October after October, and tell it. The Los Angeles Dodgers are a win from their first World Series championship in 32 years, and one Sunday night on their Oct. 10, Kershaw got another 17 outs from that, bringing them that much closer to a 4-2 win. over Tampa Bay. Rays and a three-game lead in the World Series, and then he saw manager Dave Roberts come for him. Kershaw had accepted this same strategy, just a few minutes and exactly two pitches earlier.
This was not the most important beginning of his career, just the last. What it was, more precisely, was the last outing in the World Series that he could be absolutely sure of doing. He had already pitched the most postseason innings in baseball history without winning a World Series by far, and his slider wasn’t feeling that great and his curve was a bit sloppy and yet he had still thrown near the edge of the seventh inning. . . So close to Game 6. His hair was stuck to his cheeks and he had sweated through that tattered gamer’s cap again and they weren’t going to let him pitch straight from Monday through Tuesday through Tuesday night anyway, so here it came. Dave Roberts and here came his catcher and here came all the infielders, and it was time.
Except maybe it wasn’t.
This is what Kershaw could be remembered for one day, at least in part, by the men he played with and played against, by those who trained and managed him and the people who paid to watch him and those who were served. He paid them to watch him. I mean, those October nights in dark stadiums where he never wanted to quit, never could, when he stood so still so as not to disrespect Don Mattingly or Dave Roberts and lift his glove to his face and ask for one more hitter, One more inning, one more game, one more October.
The numbers are what they are for him, at 32, after 13 brilliant major league seasons and those 10 postseason, and this postseason is five starts, four Dodgers wins, five walks, 37 strikeouts and one. 2.93 ERA. The rest, outside of what the rest of the series has in store for Kershaw and possible non-bullpen entries, will be left to the other 27 Dodgers. He’d done his part again, except, you know, that one more hitter, who seemed negotiable to him, and then maybe they could talk about the next and the next.
In a series intended to be played down to the last inches, the Dodgers’ bullpen had fallen apart in their two losses, and Game 6 seemed headed for something like a bullpen game again. The Rays would start Blake Snell in Game 6 and had Charlie Morton scheduled for Game 7. That made a Game 5 win at least critical and probably, for the Dodgers, necessary. His bullpen was changing too, in part because of who got enough rest to pitch and in part because the roster of possibly effective relievers had shrunk. So what would follow Kershaw, according to a probably somewhat fluid plan, was rookie Dustin May, then rookie Victor Gonzalez, and then Blake Treinen, and not Kenley Jansen, in the ninth inning. When it works, it is called unconventional. It’s called Knowing Your Boys. And it would be nice. Heartbreaking, maybe, but okay.
But where it originated was with two outs in the sixth inning, the Dodgers leading 4-2, bases empty, Kershaw on 85 pitches and having retired seven batters in a row, not allowing a hit since the third inning. Kershaw not only pitched to get them all into Game 6, but also to throw them out of Game 4, which had ended grotesquely for them, and with 10 outs left to play, there was clear consensus when Roberts made it to the pitcher’s mound.
“I think we all wanted Kersh to stay,” said Max Muncy, the first baseman.
They crossed their arms. They sighed loudly enough for Roberts to hear. Third baseman Justin Turner said the words everyone was thinking, Kershaw gets the next player, easy.
“Oh Justin was trying to push to keep him in the game,” Roberts said with a smile. “You saw it well.”
Kershaw put the glove to his mouth and voiced his opinion as well. If they had gotten to the point in the game where the outs get bigger and scarier, where the whole season seemed to be shaking, then everyone was in agreement on Kershaw, even with the slider he didn’t totally trust and the curve ball that had a mind of your own – you should throw those pitches. The plan was for Kershaw to get the first two hitters in the sixth and then deliver the ball. Randy Arozarena and Brandon Lowe fell on two pitches. That certainly changed everything.
On the mound, Roberts seemed to smile.
“I just felt – we felt – that I was at the end,” Roberts said. “He had enough to get two hitters to go Dustin on [Manuel] Margot. We talked about it and he kept his end of the bargain. And he got both batters. We didn’t say how many pitches. We said two batters. That was what we agreed on. At that moment I felt like I wanted to take the ball away from him. He just grimaced. He forced himself to that point. “
May, the 23-year-old who had allowed six runs in his last three appearances, came in and retired four straight batters, two per strikeout, Margot hitting a 101 mph fastball. Gonzalez followed, walked a batter to put two men on base, then put Arozarena and Lowe on flybys to finish eighth. And Treinen allowed a hit to start the ninth and pitched Austin Meadows, Joey Wendle and Willy Adames as possible tying runs. He struck out Adames to end the game, to lead them all to Game 6 with an advantage.
“Yeah, that was the plan,” Kershaw said. “We talked about it before the entrance. Even though it was only two pitches, which made him look super fast. Two outs, nobody, we continue with the plan. So credit to [Roberts] in that “.
Near the town he grew up in, in one of those dark October stadiums that haven’t always known how to treat it, before a crowd of just over 11,000 spread over one in four seats, Kershaw left with a standing ovation.
“It feels pretty good, yeah,” he said. “It feels pretty good. … That’s what you work for. That’s what you play for. This month. I also know how the other end of that feels. Then I’ll definitely take it when I can get it. “
What comes next, now that he’s put the ball down, is for Kershaw to wait. Everyone will first wait until Monday’s day off. Then he’ll see rookie Tony Gonsolin start Tuesday, knowing Walker Buehler would pitch a Game 7. And Kershaw will show up ready to pitch, because you never know.
“Well, the day off will be difficult tomorrow,” he said. “I mean, it’s going to be good for us, restarting our bullpen and things like that, which is huge. But sitting down to a World Series win is going to be tough, especially if you’ve been in the same hotel for four weeks. You know, I think we can wait one more day. “
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