With a pedestrian 79-78 won-loss record and having been out of playoff contention for months, the Dodgers wouldn't figure to be garnering local, much less national attention for their handful of remaining games. But they are.
Unless you've been hiding under a rock you know the two reasons for this: Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw.
Kemp, with his season-long, three-pronged assault of major league baseball record books, has at long last translated in 2011 his extraordinary physical gifts into elite baseball performance. He is chasing the rare batting Triple Crown (leading the league in three offensive statistical categories: batting average, home runs and runs batted in) and along with it baseball immortality. Only 13 men in the 100-plus year history of professional baseball have accomplished the feat, none since 1967.
Kershaw, a leading contender for the National League Cy Young Award, has continued in 2011 his meteoric rise to superstardom. At the tender age of 23, he has somehow already met head on the unrealistically lofty expectations that were bestowed upon him as early as age 19 when the hard-throwing southpaw drew comparisons from many to former Dodger Sandy Koufax, a fellow southpaw whose reincarnation they hoped for and whose greatness was encapsulated by the nickname, "The Left Arm of God".
Together, Kemp and Kershaw have been two brilliant shining points of light in a season mired by the dark clouds of ownership turmoil. They've been the short term pain relief for legions of Dodger fans hemorrhaging from the deep wounds current ownership continues to inflict upon the storied franchise.
I count myself grateful for the privilege of watching Kemp and Kershaw during what has otherwise been a nightmare of a year for Dodger baseball. With the future of my beloved team languishing indefinitely in courtroom limbo, Kemp and Kershaw have given me a point of focus on the baseball field.
They've taught me that it helps, sometimes, to focus on just the trees and ignore the forest.
