{"id":50409,"date":"2025-02-12T16:54:17","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T21:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=50409"},"modified":"2025-02-13T16:54:22","modified_gmt":"2025-02-13T21:54:22","slug":"im-not-sure-all-these-soft-ass-new-dodgers-fans-even-know-who-clayton-kershaw-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=50409","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m not sure all these soft-ass new Dodgers fans even know who Clayton Kershaw is"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

MLBTR<\/a>: Clayton Kershaw set to re-sign with the Dodgers for his 18th<\/sup> season<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in 2008 when I was still on my quest to visit every MLB ballpark, my journeys took me out to the west coast, where I was going to hit a Dodgers, Angels and Padres game in one fell-swoop.\u00a0 I got tickets to the Dodgers game on ebay well in advance, and was pleased to have apparently gotten someone\u2019s season tickets, as they were printed with a design versus the generic Ticketmaster printed tickets.\u00a0 Little did I or the guy who sold me the tickets, realized the significance of the specific game that I was going to.<\/span><\/p>\n

My friend and I were having a quick breakfast after landing in Los Angeles, before heading to Dodger Stadium, and we had little idea of what we were in store for seeing.\u00a0 Frankly, since they were playing the St. Louis Cardinals, we were more excited at the prospect of seeing Albert Pujols, very much still in his prime, doing Albert Pujols things.\u00a0 Being fans of east coast teams, we had little clue to who this kid Clayton Kershaw was, but was starting that day.\u00a0 I remember saying to my friend, man, but he has a 9.7 K\/9, as a starter, so we kind of had an idea of what to expect.<\/span><\/p>\n

This Kershaw kid would go on to strikeout the first batter of the game, ultimately pitch six innings while only giving up two earned runs, and although he didn\u2019t get a decision in the game, the Dodgers ended up winning in extra innings.\u00a0 A few people on the internet told me that I was really lucky to have been able to bear witness in person, to the debut of Clayton Kershaw, but I didn\u2019t really think much of it that year.<\/span><\/p>\n

In ensuing years, Clayton Kershaw would become the de facto ace of the Dodgers pitching staff, and basically become the best pitcher in all of Major League Baseball.\u00a0 He was a strikeout artist, with his signature pitch being this cartoon-looping curveball that has paralyzed an entire era of hitters, on top of the fact that he comfortably pitched at 98 mph with his fastball.\u00a0 He would win three Cy Young awards in 2011, 2013 and 2014, and he was so good at baseball in 2014, that he would also win the NL MVP award, which was a tremendous rarity for a pitcher to take home the MVP.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, there was a lot of tough luck in Kershaw\u2019s career, where no matter how good he was at baseball, the Dodgers just couldn\u2019t ever seem to get the job done, when it came to winning championships.\u00a0 Twelve years after he debuted, the Dodgers did win a World Series, but it was the 2020 World Series that receives a tremendous amount of scrutiny over its legitimacy, but for all intents and purposes, Kershaw did get to be able to declare himself a champion, finally.<\/span><\/p>\n

He technically pitched in 2024, to which if I understand correctly, means he gets to declare himself a champion again, even though he was barely a factor in the team\u2019s overall effort, but the point is, the Dodgers never really amounted to anything when he was the man, and nowadays, as the subject of this post implies, I\u2019m not even sure all the swaths of brand new lifelong Dodgers fans are even aware of who he is, regardless of just how much of an absolute world eater he was throughout the entire 2010s decade.<\/span><\/p>\n

I may or may not have written about this over the last few months since the Dodgers became World Series champions and spent a gozillion deferred dollars to create a mega roster for 2025 and beyond, but Dodgers fans are an interesting fanbase, in that they\u2019re basically terrible from all criteria sports fans use to judge other sports fans.<\/span><\/p>\n

They\u2019re fair-weathered, in that they\u2019ve multiplied by 50, coincidentally immediately after they won the World Series.\u00a0 They\u2019re the sorest winners I\u2019ve ever seen from a fanbase in that they can\u2019t seem to shut the fuck up and be happy that their team just won a championship and are more interested in parroting the same shit to textually barb with fans on the internet.\u00a0 They\u2019re softer than Charmin in that they are incapable of accepting the criticism and scrutiny that goes with success, and they all seem to go ballistic at any sort of judgment, regardless of the fact that they\u2019re repping the reigning champions.<\/span><\/p>\n

But on account of the fact that I\u2019d say 69-70% of Dodgers fans decided that they were lifelong Dodgers fans probably three months ago, they seem to be pretty unaware of their team\u2019s general history, or anything beyond November.\u00a0 They\u2019re all so busy parroting the same shit in their little echo chambers about their stacked roster, that it feels like the news of Clayton Kershaw coming back for one more year, seems to have fallen on deaf ears, despite the fact that he was easily the best pitcher for an entire era, and honestly if he\u2019s remotely healthy, can probably be a legitimate pitcher all over again.<\/span><\/p>\n

None of these fans seem to care, because the \u30c9\u30b8\u30e3\u30fc\u30b9<\/span> Dodgers rotation is pretty shored up with Yamamoto, Roki, Glasnow, Snell and very likely Ohtani will return to pitching this season, so even if they did care, there\u2019s really not any room currently for Kershaw, in spite of his right to be in it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sad as it, having written out this summary of events, it kind of seems apropos that Kershaw is in the background of things, considering the fact that such kind of has been the story of his entire career.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, considering he needs like 32 strikeouts to reach 3,000, I\u2019m sure the Dodgers media machine will work wonders getting their hordes of fairweather fans all educated up on just how legendary of a pitcher Clayton Kershaw is, and by the time he\u2019s knocking on the door, they\u2019ll all be ready with their freshly purchased Kershaw merch, ready to represent and proclaim themselves fans of his entire career, but at least it will afford Kershaw to be in the spotlight where he rightfully belongs, as artificially manufactured as it might be.<\/span><\/p>\n

Either way, I\u2019ll be happy for him when he inevitably hits it, because unlike a lot of Dodgers fake ass fans, I have been following the guy\u2019s career, and despite the fact that I generally revile the Dodgers these days, save for Freddie Freeman, I\u2019ve always had a soft spot for the guy I just happened to luck into being able to see his major league debut, after all he very well might be the greatest pitcher of my entire generation, and undoubtedly one of the best to ever do it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MLBTR: Clayton Kershaw set to re-sign with the Dodgers for his 18th season Back in 2008 when I was still on my quest to visit every MLB ballpark, my journeys took me out to the west coast, where I was going to hit a Dodgers, Angels and Padres game in one fell-swoop.\u00a0 I got tickets … Continue reading I\u2019m not sure all these soft-ass new Dodgers fans even know who Clayton Kershaw is<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,79,100,45,205,129,83,52],"class_list":["post-50409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-baseball","tag-cashmoney","tag-comparison","tag-fail","tag-mlb","tag-nostalgia","tag-observations","tag-owned"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50411,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50409\/revisions\/50411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}