There is a certain way that Joe Buck says the words “and taking the mound for the Dodgers, Clayton Kershaw” joebuckishly that has become one of the most eerie sounds in baseball, a chilling declaration that is like the phone call whispering “seven days” to the people in The Ring who are normally going about their day until a nightgown ghost lady crawls from their television to tear them apart.
Kershaw is one of the best pitchers we’ve ever seen; there’s a case to be made that he is the greatest pitcher of all time. And yet when the playoffs roll around, Kershaw at some point goes onto the mound and serves up a barrage of hits or a home run at the worst time and then slinks off to the dugout where TV cameras isolate on his anguished face for the rest of the game while Joe Buck says “you just hate to see that” but obviously we don’t because there will be approximately 5-10 minutes of footage during the rest of the game of Kershaw staring off into the distance alone in a dugout strewn with discarded gatorade cups and spit up sunflower seed shells and what appears to be the broken husk of baseball’s Icarus.