The speaker’s identity infused gravitas into a cliché that would have sounded empty coming from any other player.
“It’s been marked on the calendar for a while now,” Clayton Kershaw said.
In some ways, the Dodgers left-hander has waited more than a decade for Friday.
He’s pitched some of the most dominant regular seasons in modern baseball history and endured some of the most heartbreaking playoff failures. He’s overcome injuries and reinvented himself as his physical gifts diminished.
And in his 14th year as a major leaguer, Kershaw will finally collect a piece of diamond-encrusted jewelry by which athletes are measured in this country.