By Donald Liable
Clayton Kershaw’s pending retirement from baseball is hard to swallow.
Come Sunday, when the Los Angeles Dodgers and Seattle Mariners’ Game 162 begins with a shout of “Play ball,” the countdown to teary eyes, from both dugouts and bullpens, will commence.
The final regular-season game for both clubs, at this point, where the postseason is concerned, is a formality. The visiting Dodgers have clinched the National League West title. Led by MVP candidate Cal Raleigh, with the Mariners’ 9–2 victory on Wednesday, Seattle captured the American League Western championship for the first time since 2001.
In what could be a World Series pairing in October, the dynamic between these two clubs is stirring growing interest among baseball fans, and mixing in the end of a Hall of Fame career at T-Mobile Park makes for a superb subplot. Kershaw, 37, could walk off the field to a well-earned standing ovation on Sunday.
This past Wednesday’s Dodgers–Arizona Diamondbacks game at Chase Field in the desert saw Kershaw answer the “all hands on deck” call from Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. Among the seven relief pitches employed in the 5–4 Los Angeles win, Kershaw aided his team’s struggling bullpen by chipping in an inning’s work of allowing no hits and no runs during the 11-inning game.
Ever the consummate teammate wearing “Dodger Blue,” Kershaw’s season totals stand at a 10–2 record, with 77 strikeouts, and an impressive 3.52 ERA.
Almost surely on Sunday, both the Dodgers and Mariners’ hierarchy will have a memorable and well-earned send-off for Kershaw, who is the last MLB pitcher to win both the Cy Young Award and MVP in the same season, in 2014. There have been 11 pitchers who have won both prestigious awards in the same season.
On Thursday, Los Angeles captured their 12th division title in 13 seasons. Currently, the Dodgers are the National League’s No. 3 seed in the postseason.
A player of Kershaw’s caliber and character is generational. Eleven All-Star appearances (seven consecutively from 2011–2017), twice a member of the Dodgers’ World Series winners (2020 and 2024), registering 3,045 strikeouts, and throwing in 2,850 innings, Sunday’s ball game indeed could be unofficially “Clayton Kershaw Day” in the Pacific Northwest.
Before heading home to Dallas after the postseason, from Friday to Sunday’s matinee finale, Kershaw is prepared to enter each game and hopefully add additional support to his already flattering resume. His overall lifetime win-loss record is 222–96.
Winning on Sunday for Kershaw would make for a Hollywood ending that few athletes get to experience. The Dodgers’ bullpen has been struggling since the July All-Star Game break, with 13 blown saves. Thus, Kershaw may not be the only starting pitcher to be on call this weekend for spot duty.
The Dodgers (90–69) are hoping to be back-to-back National League World Series champions, a feat not experienced since the Cincinnati Reds won the 1975 and 1976 Fall Classic.
With Kershaw not appearing in the 2024 World Series or in any round of the postseason due to a bone spur in his left great toe, perhaps now more than at any other time this season, the left-handed thrower hopes to extend his exact retirement date. By choice, Kershaw has remained with the Dodgers, which he has said in the past was highly important to him.
Being remembered with one club, even among Hall of Famers, is rare. There’s Cal Ripken Jr., Chipper Jones, Robin Yount, Bob Gibson, and five Dodgers—Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Roy Campanella, and Pee Wee Reese—among other select few who stayed with their club from rookie to retirement.
With so many variables in motion for Sunday’s game, just like the 18 seasons where he wore a Dodgers uniform, the game could seem to go as quickly as the snap of a finger. From being selected in Los Angeles’ top draft selection in 2006 (7th overall), to Sunday in Seattle, baseball fans in and beyond California have witnessed some of the greatest hurling, including a no-hitter tossed in 2014, done by Kershaw.
Regardless of what’s on the scoreboard at T-Mobile Park for the Mariners-Dodgers series, all eyes, and rightfully so, will be fixed on the Dodgers’ No. 22. Win or lose, history will be made.
