Category: Sports News

Congratulations to class act Clayton Kershaw on a great career now that he's decided to retire. Hopefully Kersh goes out on top the way John Elway did in his final season — leading the team to a championship.

Ken Feldman
Tarzana

I have been a know-it-all Dodger fan since the late 1950s and after last season I thought, and hoped, Clayton Kershaw would retire. I was wrong.

Paul Burns
Granada Hills

I am so happy with Clayton Kershaw's decision to finally retire. Now I hope the Dodgers make the right decision and make him an offer he can't refuse by making him the highest-paid pitching coach of all time, Whom better?

Russell Morgan
Carson

Clayton Kershaw’s retirement is bad timing for the Dodgers and manager Dave Roberts. Obviously, they will need three or four starters in the playoffs and Kershaw is now fifth or sixth in the rotation. If Roberts does not use Kershaw, the manager will be called a heel, and if he does start Kershaw and he’s bombed, then Roberts will be considered a bad manager.

Fred Wallin
Westlake Village

Pitching debate

Isn't it time to allow starters to finish their games, especially when they have a no-hitter going?

Utilizing the pitch count as a preventative measure may or may not work. After all, three lights-out pitching prodigies in Walker Buehler, Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin were on restricted pitch counts. They were lights-out prospects, now they're just out.

It's impossible to predict when an injury will occur. And there may be something to the theory that more pitches will make for stronger arms, provided they have adequate rest between starts.

Ron Brumel
West Los Angeles

If the Dodgers manage to get to the World Series this year, it will be in spite of Dave Roberts' obvious incompetence that was fully on display in Tuesday night's game against the Phillies.

Not only won't he let Ohtani pitch more than five innings, despite a low pitch count, but, as he has done on eight other occasions, completely ignores the fact his pitcher was pitching a no-hitter. With his bullpen in shambles, why does he pull his starter so early?

Ken Blake
Brea

Finally, Dave Roberts showed confidence in a pitcher and Blake Snell responded. Roberts has spent his whole managerial career pulling pitchers every time they throw high. Pitchers build arm strength by pitching, not by growing splinters on their collective butts.

Steve Trocino
Simi Valley

No relief needed

The first two games of the recent series against the Phillies said it all. The Dodger bullpen is a five-alarm fire, an unmitigated disaster, a total catastrophe. I side with the recent letter writer who offered a solution to this mess: a two-starter approach. Please instigate a “no call zone” that covers the Dodger bullpen. For two starters to work the playoffs in a three-game rotation, the team needs six quality arms. We have them: Tyler Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw, Shohei Ohtani, Emmet Sheehan, Blake Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

Craig Rosen
Los Angeles

Most of the time only a four-man pitching rotation is necessary for the MLB playoffs. If the Dodgers make the playoffs, I have a suggestion for their rotation: Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and the combination of Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw. You would still have Emmet Sheehan for long relief and spot starting for injuries.

Neal Rakov
Santa Fe, N.M.

Bill Plaschke’s column on the bullpen brought to light in my mind, a notable quote by the late Howard Cosell. Although I never met the man, “Plaschke tells it like it is.” I’m amazed by the way Bill summarized Dodgers weaknesses.

Patrick Kelley
Los Angeles

A fond farewell

There is an obituary in Sunday's sports section. It is about Mike Kupper, written by Mike Kupper.

A few additional things need to be said, because Kupper wouldn’t say them himself.

He was hired because the massive Times sports section during the 1984 Olympics needed a master word editor. Once he arrived, you dared not use “that” when “which” was correct. Restrictive and unrestrictive clauses were mostly interchangeable for the rest of us. Not for Kupper.

His title was senior assistant sports editor. It could have easily been Staff Conscience Editor. We were not allowed shortcuts, lazy phrases, vague sources and insufficient attribution. He made all of us better in a quiet, firm way. When he fixed a story, we remembered how and why and dared not repeat the mistake.

He knew sports, loved its stories, loved writing many of them himself. He covered and wrote about everything. Each story was to the point, accurate, entertaining and without a whiff of the current “look at me” approach of so many writers. His specialty was auto racing. When he arrived at The Times, that specialty was already being handled by Hall-of-Fame auto writer Shav Glick. Without a hint of jealousy, Kupper walked side by side with Glick in the best one-two punch racing journalism has ever seen.

In retirement, he wrote dozens of obituaries, each entertaining and meticulously reported. Today, the one about himself, is the same. Those of us who worked with him would have expected no less.

Bill Dwyre
Baltimore, Md.

Conflicted much

It’s amazing that it took a shot of Tom Brady in the coaches booth at the recent Raiders game for most to understand that the NFL and Fox have a serious conflict of interest on their hands. This seemed glaringly apparent from the get-go, but now that it’s finally come to the forefront, it should allow Fox to rectify a wrong when they demoted Greg Olsen in favor of Brady.

Dump Tom and his mediocre broadcasting abilities and bring back Greg and his superb in-game analysis.

Axel Hubert
Santa Monica

Lock him up

Dear Chargers,

Can we please lock up defensive coordinator Jesse Minter with a lucrative contract and keep him paired with coach Jim Harbaugh for the long run? Do not let this man out of the building.

Sincerely, all Charger fanatics everywhere.

Felipe Varela
Whittier

Next move?

A lot of your letter writers got their wish with the firing of DeShaun Foster. Now what?

Vaughn Hardenberg
Westwood

Chip Kelly left UCLA in a bad position in February 2024. The coaching carousel had already stopped. DeShaun Foster, who had a nice gig as running backs coach for the Raiders, fell on the grenade that was UCLA football. He probably won’t be remembered for that sacrifice, but he should be.

Hans Ghaffari
Encino

The Los Angeles Times welcomes expressions of all views. Letters should be brief and become the property of The Times. They may be edited and republished in any format. Each must include a valid mailing address and telephone number. Pseudonyms will not be used.

Email: sports@latimes.com

Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

On the scoreboard in right field, it was 7:08 p.m. in the City of the Angels: Los Angeles, California. And a crowd of 53,037 was just sitting in Friday to see the greatest pitcher of his generation take the mound at Dodger Stadium, perhaps for the final time.

Tonight

We are young

So let’s set the world on fire

We can burn brighter than the sun

The band Fun. released what would become Clayton Kershaw’s signature song on Sept. 20, 2011. That night, he beat Tim Lincecum and the San Francisco Giants 2-1 to become a 20-game winner for the first time, in the year Kershaw would become a Cy Young Award winner for the first time.

If success means leaving someplace better than you found it, Kershaw triumphed spectacularly.

On Friday, the day after Kershaw announced he would retire at season’s end, the Dodgers beat the Giants again. For good measure, the Dodgers clinched a postseason berth for the 13th consecutive season, and with it the chance for Kershaw and Co. to win a third championship in six years.

Fun. broke up 10 years ago. Kershaw played 18 years, all in Dodger blue.

“Eighteen years of memories you can’t just put into words in one night,” Kershaw said, “or feel all the feels that you can possibly feel.”

What distinguishes Kershaw in the pantheon of Dodgers greats is that he was the guiding light through the darkest of times.

“The Dodger culture has been established long before me, and it will be established long after I’m gone,” he said. “That’s the cruel thing about baseball: your career will be gone in an instant, and the game keeps going. But that’s also the beautiful thing about it too.

“This game doesn’t need anybody. I’m so grateful I got to be a small part of Dodger history for as long as I’ve been here.”

Read more:Clayton Kershaw delivers another 'perfect' L.A. moment as Dodgers clinch playoff berth

In the 1960s, the Dodgers had Koufax, Drysdale and Wills. In the 1970s: Garvey, Lopes, Russell and Cey. In the 1980s: Valenzuela, Hershiser and Gibson. In this run of success: Seager, Bellinger and Turner; and now Ohtani, Freeman and Betts.

In between: Kershaw, a metronome of excellence every fifth day, and not nearly enough else. When he made his major league debut on May 25, 2008, the Dodgers had not won a postseason series in 20 years.

The Dodgers! Twenty years!

That is what can happen when you trade away Pedro Martinez and Mike Piazza, and when Rupert Murdoch buys your team for television content, not championships.

That is what can happen when Frank McCourt buys your team and returns the Dodgers to the league championship series but pays for advice from a Russian physicist who knew next to nothing about baseball but claimed he had “diagnosed the disconnects” in the organization while watching on television and channeling his energy toward improving the team.

That is what can happen when McCourt takes the Dodgers into bankruptcy court to take on Major League Baseball and — three days after Kershaw beat Lincecum for that 20th win — the commissioner’s office threatens to kick the team out of the league.

Those 2011 Dodgers had no chance, outspent by the Minnesota Twins and outdrawn by the Milwaukee Brewers. Kershaw pitched well enough to endure, and Mark Walter and the Dodgers’ current ownership group made sure he did not have to endure Octobers in which he pitched on short rest because the team had little choice.

“It is great that he has been a stalwart,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “He has seen the organization where it was, and there were some lean times 18 years ago.

“To see where we’re at the last 10, 12 years and where we’ve been, he’s been right there in the middle of it.”

It is easy to glance at the back of Kershaw’s baseball card, or at his Baseball Reference page, and pick whatever statistic you like to illustrate his greatness. He led the league in earned run average four years running. He won the Cy Young award three times and finished in the top five for seven consecutive years.

He was so dominant that, when he no-hit the Colorado Rockies in 2014, the Times headline read “Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw throws first no-hitter,” because of course he would throw another.

That might have been the only thing he did not do. His career 2.54 earned-run average is the lower than the career ERA of Cy Young himself. No pitcher in the last 100 years has thrown as many innings with a better ERA.

In his final season, when a 90 mph fastball was a rarity, Kershaw (10-2) still led the Dodgers’ starters in winning percentage. He did not win on Friday, but the Dodgers did.

Read more:Plaschke: Clayton Kershaw retiring with legacy as the greatest Dodger ever

These Dodgers, unlike the Dodgers of his early years, had superstars to pick him up. After Kershaw left the game in the top of the fifth, with the Dodgers trailing by one run, Ohtani and Betts homered in the bottom of the inning to put the Dodgers ahead to stay.

When a reliever enters the game, Dodger Stadium public address announcer Todd Leitz simply introduces the new pitcher. On Friday, before introducing Edgardo Henriquez, Leitz delivered a proper preface and farewell all in one.

“On in relief,” he said, “of the great Clayton Kershaw.”

Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.