Exactly 227 exceptional times, Clayton Kershaw took the ball to start a regular-season home game for the Los Angeles Dodgers. For all 227 times, you expected excellence, professionalism, leadership, and the performance of someone for whom you feel the term heart of a champion was created. Having announced his pending retirement at the end of the year, Kershaw will make one more regular-season start at home for Los Angeles. It’s only fitting it will come against the San Francisco Giants, this franchise’s biggest rival and one of Kershaw’s favorite victims ever since he tried on Dodger Blue for the first time.
While there is and will be plenty of time to reflect on the career of Kershaw, let’s stick to the pitcher we know now, and what he means for this team on and off the field. At 37 years of age, with the mileage of over 3000 professional innings in the bigs and a lengthy injury history that has greatly affected the backend of his career, Kershaw remains an incredibly positive force for this Dodgers team. A club that remains fighting and scrapping for each win as the race to win the NL West goes down to the wire.