Author of Clayton Kershaw Book Explains Importance of Dodgers’ 2017 World Series Loss
The 2017 World Series against the Houston Astros is a sore subject for anyone connected to the Los Angeles Dodgers but Clayton Kershaw relives that series regularly. It’s like a PTSD nightmare that he can’t shake.
Andy McCullough is the author of the book “The Last of His Kind: Clayton Kershaw and the Burden of Greatness,” released Tuesday. He spoke with Dodgers Nation’s Doug McKain about the Dodgers’ controversial 2017 World Series loss to the Houston Astros and the impact it had on the pitcher.
“I think 2017 is one that you know is the toughest for him, for Kershaw, to take,” McCullough said. “I mean he did say at one point, you know, I still have PTSD about that series.”
The highly toxic trash can scheme poisoned baseball but one of its victims is haunted by it to this day regardless of how many years have passed since it happened.
“I think that’s the one that has done the most psychic damage to the Dodgers,” said McCullough. “In part because the experience of those seven games was such an emotional rollercoaster. And then to come out on the other side of it and find out, you know, two years later that the Astros may have been illegally stealing their signs and that could have swung the series. And to feel like you might have been cheated off after this experience that was already so painful, I think it caused a lot of psychic harm among the organization.”
Kershaw dazzled in winning Game 1, joining Don Newcombe from 1949 as the only pitcher to strike out 11 batters without a walk in a World Series game. By the fourth inning of Game 5, Kershaw had not allowed a base runner and held a 4-0 lead, and then chaos ensued. He gave up six unanswered and was knocked out of the game in the fifth.
“It was like a failure of imagination, you know, he was like I don’t understand how they’re going to get signs,” said McCullough. “It doesn’t make sense to me how are they getting signs if there is no one at second base. And I’m not going to change what I am doing, and I’m not going to put my routine, my confidence, everything at risk in the biggest game of my life. There was just no way to prove it and I think it’s something you know people in the organization were confused about in terms of what the Astros were doing.”
Kershaw, along with the rest of the Dodgers from that season, knew the Astros would never speak publicly about the cheating scandal. Maybe it will happen in the distant future when they are paid to do so, but the players responsible escaped without a slap on the wrist. Who knows if the entire truth will ever be made public?
“No one from the Astros is going to speak about this until they’re all paid to do a documentary in 20 years,” said McCullough. “And even then, they probably won’t because the money won’t be good enough.”
Photo Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
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