Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw runs onto the field during the 12th inning in Game 3 of the World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays on Monday at Dodger Stadium.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Kershaw wasn’t going to go out like that. His services weren’t needed for the remainder of that series or the Dodgers’ four-game sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers or the first two games of the World Series.
But he — and everyone else in the Dodgers bullpen — was needed during Monday night’s marathon Game 3. Glasnow pitched the first 4 2/3 innings and was followed by relievers Anthony Banda, Justin Wrobleski, Blake Treinen, Jack Dreyer and Roki Sasaki as the initial nine innings ended with the score tied at 5-5.
Emmet Sheehan got through the 10th and 11th innings unscathed but got into a two-out, bases-loaded jam in the 12th. That’s when Kershaw, who had started warming up back in the ninth inning, finally got the call to make his 496th career game appearance and his first in extra innings.
“I warmed up a lot. I was loose,” Kershaw said in an on-field interview with MLB Network after the game. “I threw enough pitches, but that’s the life of a bullpen guy, I’m learning.”
Dodger Stadium erupted as the loudspeakers blasted Kershaw’s warm-up song, the appropriately titled “We Are Young” by fun. featuring Janelle Monáe, and the veteran pitcher prepared to face Toronto outfielder Nathan Lukes, a switch hitter who up to that point had gone 1 for 4 with a double and a walk.
With fellow Dodgers pitching legend Sandy Koufax watching from the stands, as well as childhood buddy Matthew Stafford, Kershaw delivered his first pitch, an 89-mph slider that was low for ball one. Then came the second pitch, an 89-mph slider that caught Lukes looking to even the count at 1-1.
Pitch 3, another slider at 88 mph, barely missed the inside corner of the plate. There was no question about the next pitch, an 87-mph slider for a called strike. Pitch 5 was a 87-mph slider in the dirt.
Clayton Kershaw pitches in the 12th inning during Game 3 of the World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays on Monday at Dodger Stadium.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Full count. Bases still loaded. Fans still on their feet and still offering all the encouragement they could muster.
Lukes then finally got around to swinging his bat, fouling off an 89-mph slider into the left-field stands and a 91-mph four-seam fastball high and behind the plate.
Then came the eighth pitch of the at-bat — a low 88-mph slider that Lukes bounced to second baseman Tommy Edman, who scooped up the ball and tossed it from his glove to first baseman Freddie Freeman just in time to catch the speedy Blue Jays right fielder for the inning’s third out.
Kershaw kept a serious look on his face as he walked off the mound, pumping his fist and shouting, “Let’s go!”
“Just trying to come in and get one out — definitely something that I haven’t done a whole lot, but you just try to do your job and what’s asked of you,” Kershaw told reporters in the locker room after the game. “And thankfully got a little roll over there and, yeah, it was a big out for us — I thought it was going to be a bigger out, but we played like nine more innings.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: latimes.com
