100 Things Dodgers Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die (25 page)

70. The Glory of Clayton Kershaw

Rest easy, Koufax fans, because Clayton Kershaw will never have the career Sandy had. Times change, and the game doesn't permit any pitcher to put the stress on his arm that Koufax did, peaking with 150 starts and nearly 1,200 innings over his final four seasons.

But take note, Koufax fans: because the game has evolved, Kershaw's career could, over the long haul, surpass Koufax's. That's right—surpass the greatest pitcher in Dodger history.

Before turning 25, Kershaw had amassed 974 strikeouts and a 2.79 ERA (138 ERA+) in 944 innings, compared with 683 strikeouts and a 4.10 ERA (100 ERA+) for Koufax. Now, Koufax was notoriously wild and inconsistent at the start of his career—but that's what made Kershaw's career potential so tantalizing entering the 2013 season. With that kind of head start, and with the Dodgers more careful with his arm than they were with Koufax's, Kershaw had the chance to scale Everest.

It was the rare case of a top draft choice reaching his potential every step of the way. The best consequence of the Dodgers' 91-loss season in 2005, Kershaw was snagged with the seventh overall pick in 2006, the Dodgers' second-best draft position ever. Dubbed “The Minotaur” when he was in the minors because he practically seemed mythological, he made Vin Scully's jaw drop 10 days before turning 20 in 2008 with a spring training “Public Enemy No. 1” curveball that froze Boston's Sean Casey. Two months later, having dominated Double-A ball, Kershaw was called up to the big leagues.

In 2009, his first full major league season, Kershaw finished with a 2.79 ERA and led the league in fewest hits allowed per nine innings. The main skill missing at that point was a level of control that would allow him to go deeper into games, but he steadily improved, going from 4.8 walks per nine innings in '09 to 3.6 in 2010.

Then, in 2011, came dominance, capped by a stretch run that Los Angeles, in its storied history of pitching, had hardly seen since Orel Hershiser and Fernando Valenzuela. In his final 15 starts, Kershaw went 13–1 with a 1.22 ERA, 110 strikeouts in 110
2/3
innings—and, for good measure, only 21 walks. He finished the year 21–5 with a league-leading 2.28 ERA and 248 strikeouts (the pitcher's Triple Crown) and an NL Cy Young Award at age 23.

The following season brought issues with plantar fasciitis and a hip impingement, yet Kershaw still led the majors in ERA for the second season in a row, as well as the NL in WHIP, before finishing second in the Cy Young balloting. For Dodger fans, the Kershaw standard became so high that it shocked them whenever Kershaw so much as gave up a run.

It didn't hurt the Kershaw mystique that his personal bona fides seemed every bit as impeccable, from his competitive edge that forced managers to pry the ball from his hand even when he was hurting to the compassion he and his wife, Ellen, showed in their off-season missionary trips to Africa, helping to earn him the 2012 Roberto Clemente Award for humanitarian service. But the main thing was this: Kershaw was the pitcher you could hang your livelihood on. A pitcher who looked like living history.

Pitchers are notoriously fragile, and athletic mortality is always lurking around a corner. If any Dodger of this century is likely to prove immortal, however, it's Clayton Kershaw.

 

 

 

71. Manny Mota Mota Mota Mota Mota…

Some performers aren't destined to be leading men. Some are meant to be character actors, who live beneath the marquee but steal the show at every opportunity. Though he spent his most memorable years on the Dodger bench, Manny Mota was such a stealth star. The Dodger Stadium cheers, grander than any baseball backup ever received, still echo through the years: “Mo-ta! Mo-ta! Mo-ta!”

More than a quarter of a century after he finally retired as a player, he remains the ultimate pinch-hitter in Dodgers history. Not that there hasn't been competition—Dave Hansen smacked a record seven pinch-hit homers one year, and Lenny Harris wore a Dodger uniform for 4
1/2
seasons on the way to surpassing Mota to become the majors' all-time leader in pinch-hits. But Mota almost made you look forward to the Dodgers needing a rally, such was the excitement when he came up to bat—and so often was the reward.

“Manny Mota was a bigger bargain than Alaska, or the Louisiana Territory,” Jim Murray wrote. “He has the most amazing talent in the history of baseball for getting wood on a ball. He could do it if he had just spent the previous 12 months on the moon. He can recognize a strike in the dark.”

In his Dodger pinch-hitting career, Mota went 106-for-330 with 43 walks, two hit-by-pitch, and six sacrifice flies: a .396 on-base percentage. In 1977, at age 39, he reached base in more than half his at-bats. In 1980, after he had become a Dodger coach at age 42, he was activated out of retirement for the stretch run in September and went 3-for-7.

“The trick is, Manny doesn't get his hits in the fourth inning of a so-what game against Houston on the 19
th
of August,” Murray added. “Manny gets his hits when the game is on the line and the other guys have their craftiest or swiftest pitcher in that spot, the infield is pulled around towards right, the game—or the pennant—is on the line.”

“Manny's role is, keep the rally going. He usually does this with as neat a trick as a bear on roller skates. He steps into the pitch, adjusts his hands at the last minute to the slightest blur of daylight in the defense and rockets a swift ‘bleeder' to right field that is uncatchable. He moves the pennant into scoring position.”

Mota remained a Dodger coach well past his 70
th
birthday, serving as an active link to glorious memories. In addition, the Manny Mota International Foundation has directly aided thousands of children in his native Dominican Republic. Perhaps the most remarkable part about Mota is that his dedication to community service exceeds his contributions to the Dodgers.

 

 

“Bats” Leary

The last thing Dodger pitcher Tim Leary expected to do in the bottom of the 11
th
inning on August 13, 1988, was pinch-hit. But with the Dodgers and Giants tied 1–1, Pedro Guerrero was ejected (followed by Tommy Lasorda) for arguing for a balk call after his leadoff single. Franklin Stubbs pinch-ran for Guerrero, and Mike Marshall walked, but then the lone remaining position player on the Dodger bench, Mike Davis, also got himself kicked out for too much lip.

The Giants walked Alfredo Griffin intentionally, even though he was batting .168 at the time, to get to the pitcher's spot. That meant Leary had to grab a bat. But he wasn't unfamiliar with the equipment—he was 15-for-49 on the season (.306). Leary ran the count to 3–2, then lined a no-doubter single up the middle, driving home Stubbs with an unforgettable victory.

72. Jobe and John

It wasn't the operation that was unprecedented. It was the patient.

Recalling his 1974 surgery to replace the ruptured medial collateral ligament in Dodger pitcher Tommy John's left elbow, Dr. Frank Jobe pointed out to UPI's Jim Cour that it had been performed “many times before with people with any kind of paralysis,” such as polio. This time, however, success would depend on it satisfying the demands of a pitcher, someone who would put overwhelming stress on the affected area.

And that's what made it revolutionary.

On the afternoon of July 17, 1974, John complained to reporters about being left off the NL All-Star team despite a 2.50 ERA. But that night, as he faced Hal Breeden of Montreal with two on and none out in the top of the third inning, his only concern was to try to induce a double play. So on a 1–1 pitch, he threw a sinking fastball.

“Right at the point where I put force on the pitch, the point where my arm is back and bent, something happened,” John told Ron Fimrite of
Sports Illustrated
. “It felt as if I had left my arm someplace else. It was as if my body continued to go forward and my left arm had just flown out to right field, independent of the rest of me. I heard this thudding sound in my elbow, then I felt a sharp pain. My fingers started to tingle. The ball got to the plate somehow, high and away. I threw one more pitch, at about half speed, and felt the same sensation. That pitch was even higher and farther away. I walked off the mound and met Walter Alston coming out of the dugout. ‘You better get somebody,' I told him. ‘I just hurt my arm.'”

Jobe, who had been treating Dodgers and other athletes for about a decade, initially prescribed rest while he monitored the injury. But in a very quiet, one sentence September announcement in the
Los Angeles Times
, readers were told that John would have surgery that day. Jobe removed a tendon of about seven inches from John's right arm and wound it into John's left elbow.

“The thing we hoped was that by placing the tendon in a part of the body where there's a good blood supply,” Jobe said, “blood vessels grow into it, and it remains a live piece of tissue and then permanently supports the elbow. But not every transfer works that way. We have done them where they become a dead piece of tissue. In other words, like a piece of string in there. Then in a couple of years down the road, the string breaks.”

That didn't happen, but another complication developed. There was nerve deterioration in the traumatized part of the elbow, and on December 18, Jobe operated again on John to reposition the nerve. Whatever optimism there was for John's recovery was similarly jostled.

“Dr. Jobe advised me to look for something to do outside of baseball,” John recalls. “He told me he didn't think I'd ever pitch again.”

“With a withered arm and a clawlike hand,” wrote Fimrite, “John reported to the Dodgers' spring training camp in 1975. His teammates were staggered by his appearance. ‘He couldn't throw a ball from here to that chair,' says Don Sutton, gesturing to a folding chair in the Dodger clubhouse no more than 15 feet away.” On the anniversary of the surgery, Jeff Prugh of the
Los Angeles Times
reported that John had regained strength but still lacked complete dexterity. “His ring finger, for example, is slightly crooked and his thumb is not fully maneuverable, thus preventing him from throwing breaking pitches effectively.”

But suddenly that month, things turned. “I was preparing to throw when I discovered I could bend my fingers,” John recalled to Fimrite. “I hadn't been able to do that since the first operation in September. I knew then it was just a matter of time. I had cleared the biggest hurdle.”

John still missed the rest of the 1975 season, but he was ready for spring training in 1976. That year, he threw 207 innings, and the next, 220
1/3
with a 2.78 ERA (138 ERA+), pitching a pennant-clinching complete game victory at Philadelphia and finishing second in the NL Cy Young balloting. Instead of his career ending, John pitched 2,544
2/3
more innings in the majors with a 3.66 ERA, retiring at age 46. Only seven pitchers in major league history have ever been older.

Tommy John surgery, as the procedure came to be known, not only became routine in baseball, but some actually looked forward to the new life it brought to their pitching arms. Jobe performed about 1,000 Tommy John surgeries himself, and in 1989 pioneered a new procedure used on Dodger great Orel Hershiser that also extended the life of major league pitchers. John became a borderline Hall of Fame candidate, but surely Jobe should be in.

 

 

“Legs” Gibson

Though Kirk Gibson had all but lost the use of his lower extremities by the time he hit his homer for the ages in the 1988 World Series, his legs had already provided one of the more inspirational, indelible memories of that season.

With the Dodgers trailing Montreal, 3–2, in the bottom of the ninth at Dodger Stadium on August 20, Gibson singled in the tying run. Mike Marshall fouled out to first base for the second out. But with John Shelby up, Gibson stole second base. And then, pitcher Joe Hesketh threw a 1–1 pitch in the dirt.

Gibson took off for third base, saw the ball still being retrieved near the backstop screen, and kept on chugging for home, sliding in without the Expos even being able to make a tag. In a precursor to his classic arm pump of October, Gibson leaped up and exulted with his left arm.

“I knew it would be close,” Gibson told Ross Newhan of the
Los Angeles Times
, “and I said, ‘Here I come.' If I make it, we win; if I don't, we're in extra innings. We had tied the game and I was in the mood to be aggressive.

“It went through my mind what I would do (after he had stole second). I hesitated when I got to third and saw the ball near the backstop. My adrenaline was pumping with every stride. I mean, once I got going, there was no way I was going to stop. I just pumped my arms and my legs followed.”

73. The Bison

Matt Kemp is in many ways the essence of playing baseball: potential and vulnerability.

Called up to make his major league debut at age 21 in May 2006, Kemp homered seven times in his first 15 games, quickly earning the nickname “The Bison” for his hurricane combination of size and speed. But soon, pitchers subsequently adjusted to him, and the slumping Kemp ended up back in the minors by July.

His career unfolded in similar up-and-down fashion. In 2007, he had an .894 OPS in 98 games, the following year .799 in 155 games. Then in 2009, he truly blossomed as a full-time player, winning Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards.

When he began the 2010 season with seven homers in his first 14 games, he looked like the best player on the planet. Instead, he began to have his effort and attitude questioned from within the Dodger organization, most notably in a radio interview of general manager Ned Colletti, questioning that came before his numbers declined—and decline they did. From April 22 through September 27, Kemp had a .296 on-base percentage and .392 slugging percentage with 16 homers and 147 strikeouts in 143 games, not to mention a midseason benching by Dodger manager Joe Torre, leaving Kemp looking less like a latter-day Willie Mays than a poor man's Juan Encarnacion.

During that period, a Maginot Line of supporters developed in defense of Kemp, with detractors waging their assault that he was a hopeless waste of talent. Appropriately, both sides were right and wrong. In subsequent interviews, Kemp conceded his off-field focus at the time needed work, but as the Dodgers turned to a nurturing approach from Colletti, incoming manager Don Mattingly, and coach Davey Lopes, Kemp in 2011 became a player who would exceed all expectations.

His production soared: .399 OBP, .586 slugging, 40 stolen bases and a league-best 172 OPS+, 39 home runs, 115 runs, and 126 RBI. He finished second in the NL MVP voting to Milwaukee's Ryan Braun, primarily because some voters by their own admission held it against Kemp that he did not play for a playoff team—essentially penalizing him for the inadequacies of his teammates. However, Kemp seemed to mind this less than anyone—buoyed, no doubt, by the club-record $160 million, eight-year contract he signed that off-season—focusing only on becoming an even greater player.

And so he began: a .490 OBP, .893 slugging, and 12 homers in April 2012. But again: potential and vulnerability. A season for the ages was waylaid by injuries, first to a hamstring, then to his shoulder following a violent collision with the outfield wall at Coors Field. His year rolled good and bad up together: a .906 OPS, 23 homers in 106 games, and surgery to repair labrum and rotator cuff damage.

Matt Kemp developed so much as a ballplayer by the time he was 28 that only forces of nature seemed capable of stopping him. That was only fair, because on the field, the Bison was a force of nature himself.

 

 

Artist of the Stolen Base

Davey Lopes was the first of the Dodgers' long-running infield to depart, and so even after he left following the 1981 season, it was hard not to keep an eye on how he was doing. Lopes was with the Chicago Cubs when he turned 40 on May 3, 1985. For the remainder of that season, Lopes stole 42 bases and was thrown out only four times. Dodgers fans still took pride, because Lopes had been one of theirs for so long.

It was the third time that the 5'9” sparkplug with the thick mustache had stolen more than 40 bases in a season and been caught four times. He went 45-for-49 in 1978, and the following year, he not only went 44-for-48, he blasted 28 home runs from the leadoff spot and walked 97 times. Aside from Jackie Robinson, Lopes probably had the greatest season ever for a Dodger second baseman.

But most of all, Lopes was always a precision base-stealer. In 1975, just after turning 30, he set what was then a major league record by stealing 38 consecutive bases without being caught. Even though he didn't reach the majors until he was 27, when his fastest years were behind him, Lopes was successful on 83 percent of his stolen-base attempts—both as a Dodger and for his entire career. Caught stealing records are sketchy for much of the Brooklyn era, but Lopes was very likely the best base runner in Dodgers history. He retired with 557 stolen bases, 418 of them as a Dodger, second behind Maury Wills' 490—but in 158 fewer attempts. His three-decade hiatus from the Dodgers ended when he returned to the team as a coach in 2011.