Commanding Kershaw hard to ignore on, off field
PHOENIX
On the list of baseball’s highest-paid players of all time, it’s impossible for Clayton Kershaw to hide.
The seven-year, $215 million contract he signed in January puts him in a slugger’s penthouse, perched below MVPs Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols and Joey Votto, and just above the $214 mil- lion guaranteed to Prince Fielder, a five-time All- Star who, like clockwork, will play 162 games and knock in 100 runs.
Kershaw never will do that. As the only pitcher on baseball’s list of 10 biggest deals, his job is to climb the mound every five days for the Los Angeles Dodgers, a task for which he’ll be paid nearly $1 million a start.
But being among the game’s highest-paid players — even as one of seven Dodgers who will make at least $15 million in 2014 — doesn’t always equate to leadership. Often, the separate lives of pitchers and position players make it difficult for a pitcher to emerge as a team’s voice.
Kershaw, current and former Dodgers say, challenges that paradigm: His equity earned across the clubhouse stands out from most starting pitchers.
“If he has something to say or questions you about how guys are doing stuff, you’re probably going
to listen,” Dodgers outfielder Andre Ethier says. “Because he’s been able to walk the walk the whole time. There’s pitchers who are natural leaders in a clubhouse. But that’s not given to anyone. You’ve really got to earn that.
“Everyone listens when he has something to say.”
Kershaw is not the first pitcher with gravitas. Oakland Athletics infielder Nick Punto compares Kershaw favorably with Chris Carpenter, the former St. Louis Cardinals ace whose intensity helped set a tone for two World Series-winning teams, along with Carpenter’s successor, Adam Wainwright.
But Kershaw’s combination of youth, dominance and presence is rare.
Wednesday, Kershaw celebrated his 26th birthday in Australia, where the Dodgers are playing two season-opening games vs. the Arizona Diamondbacks. As most of the USA sleeps early Saturday, Kershaw will start the Dodgers’ opener (4 a.m. ET, MLB Network), as he builds upon a résumé that includes two Cy Young Awards (and a runner-up finish) and three consecutive years leading the National League in ERA.
Kershaw signed his contract at 25, the same age Rodriguez became baseball’s highest-paid player when he landed his landmark 10-year, $252 million deal with the Texas Rangers in 2000.
Rodriguez — who was asked to not only produce but also, in essence, create a new Rangers brand — was in hindsight a poor fit for the task.
Kershaw figures to have no such issues.
“It takes a certain presence for someone to hold that role,” says Milwaukee Brewers general manager Doug Melvin, the GM in Texas when Rodriguez signed his deal. “Sometimes it takes years. Kershaw is so highly respected in the game, in the industry. I’ve heard nothing but the highest evaluations of Clayton Kershaw.”
Kershaw can’t ignore his newfound riches. Yet he also sounds convincing when he says he’ll be able to compartmentalize his wealth, knowing it suddenly won’t give his fastball any greater zip, nor make his devastating curveball — which elicits comparisons to Dodgers legend and Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax — dance any more than it already does.
“I’ve been given a tremendous blessing to throw a baseball,” he told USA TODAY Sports. “I didn’t do much to deserve it. You just try to work at it as best you can and have a ton of fun doing it.”
Indeed, it is both the work and the fun that burnish his stature among teammates.
‘WE’VE SEEN HIM GROW’
Kershaw plays in an era in which performance centers and personal trainers ensure almost every player is in peak condition year-round. Yet his fervor for the weight room — and his outsized presence on days he pitches — seems to set him apart.
“I’ve played with a lot of hard workers, but it’s the intensity that he goes about it — that’s hard to maintain that throughout the season,” catcher A.J. Ellis says. “I’m sure every team has a guy like that. For our team, it also happens to be our best player.”
That combination is hard to come by within baseball’s salary structure, which grants players free agency after six seasons, often when they are near the end of their peak. Pujols was 32 when he started a 10-year, $240 million deal with the Los Angeles Angels in 2012 — the same year teammate Mike Trout began his rise to baseball’s consensus best player.
Kershaw won’t make the highlight reels on a nightly basis by climbing walls or hitting prodigious home runs. Still, he’s hard to ignore, if you look closely.
San Diego Padres manager Bud Black noticed this a few years ago, as he’d peer across the field into the Dodger dugout and notice a lanky, shaggy-haired character.
“He’s a guy who’s on the top step, a guy who’s obviously pulling hard for his teammates,” says Black, the Padres manager since 2007, one year before Kershaw debuted. “It wouldn’t surprise me that his reputation amongst Dodger teammates is getting out. Tremendous character guy. We’ve seen him grow before our eyes.”
Kershaw often is at the center of the Dodgers’ legendary clubhouse ping-pong games and finds he can’t stay away even if the starting pitcher lifestyle dictates he spend a game night down the tunnel from the dugout.
“It is important to me,” he says. “I want to be a great teammate. You pitch once every five days, it’s probably pretty easy to check out. For me, we kind of have a responsibility to be the team’s energy on the bench that day. It’s not easy for those guys to play every day.”
Kershaw seems every bit the laid-back and affable Texan his Dallas upbringing suggests. Left fielder Carl Crawford notes Kershaw’s “not an intimidating guy — you hear stories of Kevin Brown, Randy Johnson — that’s not the case with him. He gets along with everybody. And he’s easy to approach.”
‘DO THE RIGHT THINGS’
Several teammates close to Kershaw say he watches his finances closely, and he insists his enhanced wealth won’t change his mentality toward material goods.
Yet what of this near quarterbillion-dollar windfall?
“I think there comes a lot of expectations with a contract like that — good and bad,” Kershaw says. “On the field, you’re expected to perform. Off the field, I think we have a tremendous responsibility to steward the money the right way and do the right things with it.”
He and his wife, Ellen, work toward that end. Kershaw has made multiple trips to Zambia, where Ellen’s encounter with an HIVpositive orphan inspired them to pour funds from his foundation into providing clean drinking water, homes and a school in partnership with Arise Africa. Stateside, he has aided in funding a continuation school in south Los Angeles.
Kershaw is not the first athlete to helm a charitable foundation. His engagement with it, however, seems to lend a greater air of legitimacy, one that resonates in his workplace.
“To be a leader, you have to approach your life on a consistent basis,” Dodgers GM Ned Colletti says. “If you’re going to call somebody out, or help somebody adjust to something, or keep somebody on a straight path, you have to live that way yourself. When you have that type of human résumé, people generally listen.”
It also doesn’t hurt that on a team of stars, in a city that embraces them, Kershaw has youth, health and performance going for him. In 2013, the Dodgers fell two games shy of their first World Series appearance since 1988. Kershaw says Los Angeles “would kind of go crazy if we won the World Series again.”
He won’t allow much beyond that, other than to note he will not take for granted any of his opportunities. That means making every moment count, even when the ball is not in his hand.
“When he does let his voice be heard,” Ellis says, “it sets a tone for all of us. And sets a level for us to reach.”