Kershaw on retirement: “So far, so good.”

LOS ANGELES — Clayton Kershaw went on the Dan Patrick Show sounding like a man who finally got to exhale after 17 seasons in Dodger blue and back-to-back titles. Patrick teased him about how strange retirement is going to feel once the baseball calendar flips, and Kershaw met him with the same dry, easy delivery Dodger fans have heard for years. He’s out of the rotation now, but he still talks like a pitcher who knows the rhythms of a season.

“Day one. Pretty good,” he said when Patrick opened with the retirement question. “So far so good.” Then he admitted the part everyone expects. “Everybody says, or a lot of guys that I’ve talked to, said Opening Day is the day where you’re like, ‘Man, I’m not there.’ You know, it’s weird.” He added that spring won’t hit him as hard. “To be fair, I haven’t been in spring training in a couple years. I’ve kind of planned some surgeries pretty well, so kind of missed spring training. So that won’t be too new for me.”

When Patrick asked what this World Series felt like compared with the others, Kershaw went straight to the last two years of parades. “Last year was really cool because we got the parade,” he said. “After the COVID World Series, not getting to do the parade or anything, and then getting to do that last year, it was kind of a celebration of almost two World Series.” This one, he said, felt even fuller. “For me personally to be a part of this one more than I was last year and to get to feel a little bit more a part of it, and then the parade this year was insane. It was so much bigger, so much longer, so many people.” What made it hit home was that it happened as he was closing the book. “Your last one, to get to kind of celebrate with the fans and tell them thank you, tell them how much they supported us and our team and me personally for so long, it was just so fun.”

Family has always been a big part of his story, so Patrick went there too. “I’m thankful for that,” Kershaw said about having his kids old enough to remember. “My oldest three, I think, will definitely… I don’t know, do you remember stuff when you’re five? I think you do.” He talked about his son Charlie hanging around the club. “He got to be in the dugout a lot this year. Got to shag BP, do all the stuff, and so he was super invested in it this year. And I’m thankful they’ll remember me, that I had a job at some point.” Then he made sure Ellen got her credit. “My wife, rockstar. She’s pregnant right now. And traveling from Toronto to Dallas to do school, back to L.A. to Toronto. Doing it all. So it was good to be home and good to get to celebrate with the fam, too.”

Patrick brought up the clip of Ellen living and dying with every pitch. Kershaw laughed. “She’s not a reliever wife, Dan. She’s a starter wife. That’s just too much stress to not know when you’re coming in.” That led Kershaw into what it was like to warm in the bullpen as a future Hall of Famer who has spent his career starting. “You’re confident you can do your job,” he said, “but warming up in the pen, hearing that phone ring, kind of all new stuff for me. That phone rings, it’s like an adrenaline pump.” He said he was relieved it went right. “At the end of the day, I’m just so glad I got that out because that was the last time I ever pitched. And it could have gone sideways. So I’m just glad I got that last out.” He laughed that he thought it was going to be the key out of the night. “I thought it was going to be a bigger out, but we ended up playing like seven more innings.”

Roberts had said Kershaw was available for Game 7, and Kershaw admitted he lost the game situation for a second. “I had no idea there was one out,” he said. “So when Kirk grounded into that double play, I thought I was coming in the game. Tie game, extra innings, I’m pitching with two outs and a lefty up to bat. And then Bardo, our bullpen coach, just said, ‘Hey, we just won the World Series.’ I had no idea. So that was amazing.” That’s a good snapshot of how chaotic that clincher was for the guys in the ‘pen.

He turned the spotlight to Yoshinobu Yamamoto right away. “Wasn’t it amazing what Yama did?” Kershaw said. “I don’t know if you’ll ever see that again in baseball. A guy that pitched Game 6, come in and not just get one or two outs, but go two and I think it was two and two-thirds or something. Just incredible, superhuman stuff from Yama.” He pointed out that Yamamoto spent the year on a careful schedule. “He’s been on a Japanese schedule, and even this year Doc protected him a lot, basically pitching on a week rest or six days the whole time. For him with no days to go out there and do it, I’m thankful for Yama. He got me one more World Series. So thank you, Yama.”

Since it was a national show, Patrick asked about Shohei Ohtani. Kershaw came armed with the stat. “Check the numbers, Dan. I never gave up a hit to Sho. I will have that for the rest of my life,” he said. “I think he was like 0 for 10 or 11 or something.” Patrick said it was 0-for-11 with four strikeouts. “Feels good,” Kershaw said. He explained it like a pitching coach. “You can’t throw middle-speed pitches,” he said. “Those slider, changeup, mid 80s, upper 80s, I don’t care how good it is, I don’t feel confident throwing that stuff. You’ve got to throw really hard or throw soft, like curveball.”

That opened the door to the real question: when did he know it was time to hang up the cleats. “Over the course of this season I really started to feel it more,” he said. “I was able to pitch okay and had a decent season, which I’m super thankful for, and I was healthy for it. But sometimes you look up there and I was throwing 87, 88 mph fastballs and I felt healthy. Felt completely healthy. And it just felt like it was the right time. This was not going to work for that much longer.” He said he and Ellen had basically talked about it before the year. “Going into the season we’re like, ‘Hey, this kind of feels like the last one.’ So this last month knowing that it was over and getting to do this the way it was, just couldn’t write a better script.”

Patrick closed by asking what he wants to do now. Kershaw said he’s fine not knowing. “I don’t know, man,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of kids, so obviously I’ll do that for a while. I love baseball. I have a passion for it. I feel like I can help in some regard in some way. But I have no idea what that looks like.” He said if the Dodgers offer one of those light-travel, special-assistant jobs, he’d listen. “There’s some cush gigs out there,” he said. “We have a baby coming in December, and everybody says I have to figure out how to play golf, so maybe I’ll try that. I really don’t have any idea. It’s kind of nice, though, the no plan.”

That’s where Dodgers fans find him: retired at the right moment, grateful for one last ring, grateful for the parade, grateful for Yama bailing everyone out, and still talking the game like he could walk into Camelback Ranch in February if he wanted. This time he doesn’t have to.

See you in Cooperstown, Kersh.

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