My Letter to Clayton Kershaw

When I wrote this I did not know the Astros were cheating:

I am going to try my hand at Sports Writing as I watch the @RaysBaseball vs @astros – my topic – The Baseball Gods, The Post-Season and Clayton Kershaw and the @Dodgers.

My late dad

taught me to respect the Baseball Gods. He told me “they know”. Always run out ground balls. Respect the game, from the way you wear your hat to cleaning up the dugout after the game. Little things like never walk between the mound and the plate, go around, to big things like respecting the other team.

When I think of Clayton Kershaw I can’t help but think that sometimes the Baseball Gods are not involved.  Sometimes the game of baseball is cruel because it is a game based on cruelty, failure. It is the only sport with the letter ‘E’ on the scoreboard. The game knows you are going to make mistakes and wants to keep up with them. I have been a life-long @cubs and @RedSox fan so I know the feeling of NOT winning. Luckily, later in life, I have known the Joy Of Winning.  From what I can tell, Clayton Kershaw is a better person than he is a pitcher.

When I think of Kershaw it makes me think of Dave Winfield. What did Steinbrenner say, Instead of Mr. October he was Mr. May?  The regular season is a grind, but the law of averages takes over. In the post-season, each pitch is literally life and death for a ball club. Every at bat, every pitch, every fielding play is magnified. Baseball may be the only game that defines a person’s career on such a small sample size. Literally 5-15 seconds of action creates a lifetime moment. A @BuffaloBills placekicker may argue but my hunch is most of us remember far more baseball post-season Moments than any other sport. For me it is Durham ground ball against the @padres – Bucky Bleeping Dent and Aaron Bleeping Boone and Of Course Buckner in game 6. It takes a lot of courage to play a game where you are creating a lifetime of memories.

I hope Kershaw continues to be an awesome pitcher. I hope he gets the ball in a post-season game next year and shoves it. Hopefully not against my @cubs and I won’t mind it that much if it happens at Fenway Park. I want to leave Kershaw and @Dodgers fans with a speech by Teddy Roosevelt my Papa shared with me when I was a little boy:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Thank You for being an awesome pitcher Clayton Kershaw and from I can tell an even better person.

Signed,

David Limbaugh

HUGE FAN OF THE WAY YOU PLAY THE GAME!