A model of this story ran in 2016.
The child was tall, he was well-built, and he was warming for his second outing of his first Main League camp. Vero Seaside, Fla. Dodgertown. March 9, 2008.
Sean Casey watched. On the cusp of his first season with the defending world champion Pink Sox — his twelfth and closing season within the bigs — he knew the league inside and outside. However 19-year-olds carrying jersey No. 96 don’t qualify as recognized portions, even to a wily vet.
“Mags,” Casey stated to hitting coach Dave Magadan, “have you learnt this man?”
A handbag of the lips and a shake of the top.
“Tito,” he stated to supervisor Terry Francona, “you recognize him?”
Casey got here up with two outs. The primary pitch was a rocket. Ninety-seven on the black. Strike one.
“That was legit,” Casey thought to himself. “That was completely different.”
He appeared over to the open-air visiting dugout. Magadan shrugged. Francona shrugged.
Subsequent pitch, curveball. An enormous previous hammer. On the face one second, on the knees the following. Casey buckled. Strike two.
This time, he appeared over to the house dugout. Dodgers supervisor Joe Torre and third-base coach Larry Bowa have been laughing.
Now Casey knew. The joke was on him.
Third pitch, one other heater on the sting of the zone. Casey couldn’t even muster the momentum to drag the set off. The umpire generously referred to as it a ball. The ump most likely figured he was giving the established and notoriously scrupulous hitter the advantage of the doubt, when in reality he was solely prolonging the nightmare.
Lastly, mercifully, memorably, the finisher. The curve once more. You don’t undergo your profession putting out in solely 10 % of your plate appearances with out the flexibility to learn pitches, to attend on breaking balls. However Casey had by no means seen something like this. He surrendered to Uncle Charlie, emphasis on the “uncle.” The rotation, the depth, the freefall like an elevator with a snapped cable. This embarrassing at-bat was as misplaced on the plate as Casey had ever felt in his skilled profession. And when the umpire rung him up after 4 pitches, throughout which the bat by no means left his shoulder, with Torre and Bowa nonetheless laughing within the different dugout, Casey retreated in utter confusion.
“What the hell simply occurred?”
Not on the peak of his three-time Cy Younger powers, after all, however on the prime of the Stay Ball Period ERA+ (154) and WHIP (1.02) leaderboards (minimal 2,000 innings).
To be nearly as good as Kershaw has been for so long as he has requires fixed work, fixed tinkering, fixed reinvention because the league evolves. However the nice fixed in Kershaw’s profession has been that old-school curveball, which, right here in his 18th and closing season, remains to be baffling batters to the tune of a .163 common.
Kershaw has thrown the curve round 6,600 occasions in his profession, counting the postseason. The primary one many people noticed was that killer to Casey.
Whilst not too long ago as 2008, prospect hype hadn’t hit the heights we’re so well-accustomed to now. Kershaw was the seventh general choose within the Draft two summers earlier, so a good variety of Dodger followers knew his title and have been most likely excited to see him for his first appearances in a televised tilt.
However to the opposition — to the informal fan within the Vero Seaside stands — he was just a few child off the again fields.
That 1-2 curveball modified every little thing. It impressed a “holy mackerel” out of Vin Scully, who immediately dubbed it “Public Enemy No. 1.”
If the baseball world at giant didn’t know Kershaw earlier than he struck out Casey, it did now.
However after all, a curveball is just nearly as good because the pitches that set it up. And that’s the place Kershaw needed to develop. The Casey at-bat featured the complete extent of his choices in 2008, a yr by which he would make his official debut and log a 4.26 ERA in 22 appearances.
Kershaw, again then, was a two-pitch pitcher, which implies his occasional brilliance was in the end unsustainable. Halfway by 2009, he discovered a slider, which sounds innocent sufficient. Besides that as rapidly as the following season, it rated as some of the efficient pitches in all of baseball, per the superior metrics accessible on the time at FanGraphs.
Uncooked expertise is one factor, however the aptitude to select up a brand new pitch and make it arguably nearly as good as your greatest pitch virtually in a single day is what makes the great ones nice. And over the past 20 years, nobody has been higher than Clayton Edward Kershaw.
The curve, although, remains to be Kershaw’s breathtaking magnificence, a bread-and-butter pitch that, by the years, has made batters toast. To at the present time, it nonetheless generates 67 inches (with gravity) of vertical drop, 1.4 inches greater than the typical curve in MLB. Kershaw has used his curve to freeze extra folks than Queen Elsa of Arendelle.
“It’s an superior weapon,” Kershaw’s longtime private catcher A.J. Ellis instructed us again in 2016, “that’s distinctive in all of baseball.”
Ellis caught extra Kershaw curves than anyone, which implies he’s uniquely certified to evaluate them.
“Clayton’s curveball utilization is at all times depending on his capability to get in favorable counts,” Ellis added. “If you’re in these conditions, you should use your curveball extra, and hitters have to guard in opposition to it extra. When he throws it proper and he will get that good 12-to-6, top-to-bottom spin, it’s an unhittable pitch.
“Clayton has very repeatable mechanics and a great understanding of what he must do on every throw to execute it, and that’s a testomony to his focus and his self-discipline. All that factoring collectively created a spot the place he may actually dominate with that pitch.”
As for the opinion of the person himself?
“I believe simply the largest factor is throwing it the place I wish to extra usually,” Kershaw stated. “I’ve been capable of spin it the identical since I got here up. However realizing when to throw it within the dust and when to throw it for a strike and with the ability to do it extra constantly is the distinction.”
So right here we’re, nearing the tip of the 37-year-old Kershaw’s legendary profession. In a sport by which so many prime pitching prospects blow out and flame out, a survivor like Kershaw, with greater than 3,000 innings (together with the postseason) and three,000 strikeouts, is a marvel.
After Casey took that referred to as third strike in ’08, he couldn’t get No. 96 and that confounding curveball out of his head. So he watched with nice curiosity when the child made his correct debut two months later, and he’s after all been as engrossed as anyone with all that’s transpired since.
It’s humorous. In 11 seasons, Casey made greater than 5,600 plate appearances. He had 1,531 hits, performed on a pair of playoff groups and went to 3 All-Star groups. He had an amazing profession.
And but it’s a four-pitch strikeout in a meaningless March exhibition that he calls “essentially the most memorable at-bat of my profession.”
Not less than Casey can discover solace in the truth that whereas he might need been the primary public sufferer of Public Enemy No. 1, he was removed from the final.
“Now,” he stated, “I don’t really feel so dangerous. Now he’s doing it to everyone.”
