Stories about all-time greats pile up over the years and there are plenty about Clayton Kershaw, about his work ethic, his personal ethics. My favorite is from our colleague Jessica Mendoza, who made an offseason trip in 2019 to the Dominican Republic with Kershaw and his wife, Ellen, as part of a group combating sex trafficking.
Mendoza, the producer she worked with on the story and cameramen boarded first class -- coincidentally, along with (now former) Houston Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow -- and as the groups of fliers were called, Clayton walked past first class, almost all the way to the back of the plane. "Almost all the way to the back of the plane, two or three rows from the bathroom, there was Clayton in a middle seat, with Ellen in the aisle," she recalled. "Like, 36E." At 6-foot-4 and 225 pounds and squeezed upright, he loomed over those around him.
Mendoza asked the Kershaws about sitting in the back, when of course first class was accessible to them, and the question seemed to take Clayton aback. When all money saved on the trip could make such a difference, the Kershaws thought, of course you sit in the back.
Clayton Kershaw has helped to build houses in Africa and affect change in the Dominican Republic, raised tons of money with an annual pingpong tournament, and if you know the Kershaws, you know that he and Ellen and their children will continue to do this long after he throws his last pitch for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He'll have a fulfilling life, the next 32 years probably even better than the past 32; Kershaw is one of those rare people for whom a chosen vocation will be turn out to be incidental in how he defines himself.
Every baseball career ends, and in some cases, you worry for the aging athlete about what comes next. With Kershaw, you know: He'll have plenty to do. As a dad. As a spouse. As a friend. There is an elementary school right across the street from the Kershaws' house, and Clayton has talked about tenure as a crossing guard. He's grossed over $200 million in salary in his career, but likely has given away more than he's spent on himself, a habit likely to last his lifetime.
All of which raises the question: Would it be shocking to those who know him if the last moment of his playing career was that great smile of relief and joy, after Julio Urias fired that last strike of the 2020 World Series?
No, it wouldn't. "It's a fair question," a friend in the game said. "I've wondered. He could keep pitching, but he'd be happy even if he wasn't pitching."
Kershaw has probably accomplished most of what he'll do as a major league pitcher. He has the best Adjusted ERA+ of any starting pitcher in baseball history. He's won three Cy Young Awards and an MVP award. Now that the Dodgers have won the World Series, Kershaw is a world champion. When his name is placed on the Hall of Fame ballot five years after he retires, he could join Mariano Rivera as a unanimous selection, and all of the Kershaw kids will be old enough to remember his speech.
Kershaw is in line to make more money next year, $23 million for the final year of his current contract with the Dodgers. But it's unclear now -- and perhaps for some time -- what the next 18 months of baseball will look like, because of COVID-19 and the sport's ugly labor relations. Based on the early machinations of this offseason, teams are clearly posturing for massive payroll rollbacks in 2021, and if no coronavirus vaccine is widely distributed soon, it's not a sure thing that there will be fans in the stands next year, either. The owners and players might again have to negotiate terms for a truncated season, and it's very possible that those might again be brutal, drawn out -- leading up to the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement 13 months from now.
Does Kershaw want to wade through that again? In 2017, after the Dodgers won the National League pennant, he asked, "Who knows how many times I'm going to get to go to the World Series?" He also mused, "If we win, I might retire. ... I might just call it a career."
He has played baseball his whole life and he might prefer to continue doing that, for the joy of playing. Like Mike Mussina -- who stopped at 270 career wins, finding no allure in slogging in mediocrity to 300 -- Kershaw has never struck me as a milestone kind of guy. He's 25 wins from 200 in his career, 167 innings from 2,500. He could be three seasons from 3,000 strikeouts. I'd bet he has never and will never give a thought to any of that.
Kershaw is excellent at maintaining friendships, and he has always enjoyed most of his teammates -- watch him laugh here at Cody Bellinger in their joint appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" the other night -- and maybe he'd like to continue being part of a wolf pack for another one or two or three more years.
Now that he experienced the joy of a championship, perhaps he'd like a chance at another one; the Dodgers will presumably go into 2021 as prohibitive favorites to be MLB's first repeat champion since the 1998-2000 Yankees.
Once Kershaw retires, he'll never again have the opportunity to compete at the highest possible level, and the left-hander has always loved that part of it -- arriving early to the park with a game face, locking in emotionally, challenging opposing hitters with inside fastballs or his sweeping slider, spinning great curveballs. Even as he ages and his velocity continues to diminish, there appears to be plenty of ways he could combat hitters like former teammate Zack Greinke does, using his slow stuff to frustrated hitters.
Sandy Koufax walking away at 30 years old after an injury-plagued career, that was a shocker in baseball in the fall of 1966, at least for those unfamiliar with the excruciating pain that plagued the Dodgers lefty. Kershaw has had his own bouts of physical problems, back and hip issues never fully detailed for the media, which is his prerogative, but there's no reason to think that ailments would drive him out of the game next year; he's coming off a season in which he had a 2.16 ERA and picked up two wins the World Series.
But he has always been comfortable doing his own thing. One of my favorite stories about Kershaw is from my own experience as a reporter. The winter after he won a Cy Young Award, SportsCenter asked for a winter profile about Kershaw's offseason work. His high school coaches had given him access to the campus facilities, and our camera crew and I waited for the Kershaw caravan to arrive. A personal trainer, I assumed, and maybe a public-relations handler, an agent, maybe a friend who served as a go-fer.
Clayton pulled up, on time. Alone. He went through his throwing session alone, tossing baseballs into a net. He pushed himself through his workouts. He did his own media relations.
Kershaw will know when it's the right time to move past baseball. Maybe it's now; maybe not. Now that he knows the feeling of winning a World Series, he'll eventually walk away from baseball having enjoyed just about the full range of its experiences, for something he finds even more fulfilling.
News from around the major leagues
That the Red Sox have been in contact again with Alex Cora would seem to be the strongest indication yet that he'll be back as the Boston manager. That is the right move for Chaim Bloom, the head of baseball operations for the Red Sox, who could pick an unknown and effectively invite heavy media (and ownership) scrutiny if Boston suffered through another disappointing season. Bringing back Cora effectively buys Bloom two more years to put his organizational remodeling in place.
There will be some social media backlash if the Red Sox rehire Cora, just as there was for the Tigers after they hired AJ Hinch as their manager Friday, because of their respective roles in the Astros' sign-stealing scandal of 2017. But the fact is that both men served their penalties, which included a summer in exile, and as two of baseball's better managers, it was inevitable they would be quickly snapped up.
The sport's history -- America's history -- is saturated with examples of those who have gotten second (and sometimes third and fourth) chances, from Manny Ramirez to Starling Marte to Mark McGwire to Andy Pettitte. Babe Ruth faced discipline repeatedly in his career, for various incidents. Alex Rodriguez was given a yearlong suspension in 2014, and less than six years later, he emerged as a serious bidder for one of the game's most-coveted franchises. Former Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was kicked out of baseball and when he came back and his team won, he was feted. Within the industry, the shortness of memory and grudges is usually directly related to the talent of the individual in question, and Cora and Hinch are highly regarded as managers.
• Charlie Morton's situation might illustrate, better than any other case, where baseball's financial landscape is headed. The Rays held a one-year, $15 million option for 2021 on the right-hander, and pre-coronavirus this was the type of contract that Tampa Bay would have typically been drawn to -- a short-term deal reasonable within the market context, for a respected and productive player. The Rays staffers love Morton, a self-effacing veteran who leads naturally.
But the Rays turned down Morton's option while also making it clear they'd love to retain him -- just for a less money. And perhaps even a lot less money, depending on how deeply the payroll rollbacks around the sport manifest.