by Mark Jent
March 2007. It was my first trip to Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Florida – the Dodgers’ historic spring training site. Since 1948 so many legends had graced the diamonds on those hallowed grounds – Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, PeeWee Reese, Gil Hodges, Duke Snider, Don Newcombe, Carl Erskine, Fernando Valenzuela, Orel Hershiser, Mike Piazza, as well as franchise icons Tommy Lasorda and Vin Scully. If someone had buttoned up that classic white home jersey with blue Dodgers script across their chest in the past 60 years, then they had the good fortune of calling those iconic fields home for six weeks every spring.
Visiting Dodgertown had been on my bucket list for a few years. When the team announced that they would be moving their spring training facility to Arizona in 2009, I knew I needed to plan a pilgrimage before it was too late. So a few months prior, two friends and I laid out a five day 1,600 mile road trip. An epic adventure was awaiting.
Dodgertown was known to be a place where you have to always keep your eyes peeled when walking the backfields as there was a chance that greatness could be around the corner. No matter how long they had been retired, former players would return every year to catch up with each other, to chew the fat with Tommy and to mentor the current crop. But there was one person who was atop my list of baseball royalty who I wanted to meet, even just a chance encounter in passing would suffice – the great Sandy Koufax.
For decades Koufax has been known to be an extremely private individual. Today he rarely makes public appearances except the occasional visit to sit in his front row seat at Dodger Stadium. Back then, he would come to spring training at Dodgertown and be seen on the backfields watching the pitchers get their reps in while giving tips.
My lasting hope was to catch him on a backfield, maybe shake his hand and get a picture if I was lucky. You better believe that my eyes were trained that weekend to be on the lookout for every gray haired, trim and fit guy in his 70s. Before the game started on the final day I made one last pass through the practice fields with fingers crossed that with the crowds now inside Holman Stadium, I might get lucky and catch him – but to no avail.
As I stood there in my disappointment getting ready to go watch the game, I noticed several young players coming out of the locker room. Like anyone who’s just been signed to play pro ball and is at their first spring training, they were joking around on the way to practice. I was a novice to paying more attention to who we drafted or was up and coming through the farm system. This was in the days before social media, so anything I read was an occasional article on our prospects put out by the team or what a fan had written on a blog.
Right before I stepped away to make the stroll back to the ballpark I saw a tall, lanky, baby-faced young guy amidst the scrum of minor leagues. Although I couldn’t tell you a lot about him, I recognized him as our 2006 1st round draft pick out of Dallas – Clayton Kershaw. He was still 18 years old at the time, just a couple of weeks shy of his 19th birthday. A few kids got his autograph, but while I was contemplating pulling a fresh Rawlings baseball out of my backpack, I thought to myself “I’m not sure if he will ever be worth a $20 baseball or not, so I’ll just get a picture with him in case he turns out to be any good.” So I gave my digital camera to a bystander to get my picture with this giddy teenager. He seemed genuinely excited that someone just recognized him!
Little did I know that as I was chasing greatness that day in Sandy Koufax, just when I thought I would be leaving discouraged, I encountered his eventual heir apparent who would become the best pitcher of his generation, Clayton Edward Kershaw. In the 18 years since then, the irony of the story has never been lost on me – right when it seemed that greatness had eluded me, another form of greatness walked towards me.
That tall, lanky, baby-faced Clayton Kershaw announced his retirement yesterday. In the 18 years since that spring training he has accomplished a few things on the baseball field that would have made it worth for me to use that $20 ball for his autograph.
• 11x All-Star
• 3x Cy Young Award
• 2011 Gold Glove
• 2011 Pitching Triple Crown
• 2012 Roberto Clemente Award
• 2014 N.L. MVP
• 5 ERA titles
• 3,000 strikeouts and counting
• 2x World Series champion
His 18 years as a Dodger are the most in franchise history, tied with Bill Russell. Earlier this season he became the 20th pitcher with 3,000 career strikeouts. He became just the fourth left-handed pitcher (R. Johnson, Carlton, Sabathia) to accomplish the feat and just the third pitcher (W. Johnson, Gibson) to do so having only played with one team.
I’ve had two favorite players during my four decades of being a baseball fan – Darryl Strawberry from my childhood and Clayton Kershaw during my 30s and 40s. With his retirement, a chapter of my baseball fandom will close too as he walks away from the game. I spent many late nights and Sunday afternoons listening to Vin Scully talk about “Public Enemy Number One,” which is what Vin called Kershaw’s curveball that drops out of the sky. After Vin left the booth in 2016, Joe Davis has carried the torch to describe what we were witnessing as Kershaw’s hands raise high above his head and he goes into his unconventional windup.
Players like Kershaw don’t just bring fans joy because of the outcome of their performance. No, what a player like Clayton Kershaw brings to a fanbase is much bigger than the game. He has given countless Dodger fans an outlet from other distractions in life that weigh us down. When he would take the ball every fifth day you could count on seeing something special that might just be the pick-me-up you needed that week. There are plenty of things (faith, family, friends) in my life that are more important than me being a Dodger fan and Clayton Kershaw being my favorite player, yet sports have a way of giving us something to enjoy and look forward to that goes beyond the final out.
Tonight he will be taking the mound at Dodger Stadium for his last regular season game. A humble guy who has never wanted the spotlight, Kershaw had to be convinced by his wife Ellen that the fans deserved to know he would be hanging it up so they could enjoy one more outing. No doubt there will be many tears in the crowd tonight from 53,000 fans at Chavez Ravine. His moments in the spotlight on the field might be numbered, but there are plenty of moments ahead that will honor his career – Cooperstown Hall of Fame Induction in July 2031, the Dodgers retiring his #22 and, I suspect, he will be cast into a bronze statue in the centerfield plaza alongside Jackie and Sandy.
I have been fortunate to meet Kershaw a few more times since that day at Dodgertown – 2010 in Cincinnati, 2013 at Brentwood Academy (he spoke in chapel), 2014 in Atlanta, 2015 in Cincinnati. As I think about it, each encounter could be a stand alone story on its own!
By the way, I eventually got him to autograph a ball!
And yes, I’m still chasing Koufax…
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