Ear-Bending Cellmate: …and when there was no meat, we ate fowl and when there was no fowl, we ate crawdad and when there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand.
H.I.: You ate what?
Ear-Bending Cellmate: We ate sand.
[pause]
H.I.: You ate SAND?
Ear-Bending Cellmate: That’s right.
Kershaw CIV: Kershawzing Arizona
Dee Gordon, 2B
Yasiel Puig, CF
Matt Kemp, RF
Hanley Ramirez, SS
Scott Van Slyke, LF
Justin Turner, 1B
A.J. Ellis, C
Miguel Rojas, 3B
Clayton Kershaw, P
By Jon Weisman
It’s true. These have been some rocky years for Clayton Kershaw at Arizona’s Chase Field: a five-game, three-year losing streak, the nadir being his five-out, seven-run outing May 17.
The losses haven’t all been equal. On September 11, 2012, he allowed an unearned run in seven innings and lost, 1-0. On April 12, 2013, he allowed one earned run in his first seven innings, then left with the bases loaded in the eighth and watched Shawn Tolleson, in his only game of 2013 and his last as a Dodger, walk home two runs in a 3-0 defeat.
Overall, Kershaw has had four quality starts out of nine in Arizona, plus a fifth in which he pitched shutout ball for 5 2/3 innings in a 14-1 Dodger victory. He hasn’t had his primo consistency there, but it’s hardly a guaranteed chamber of horrors.
Kershaw, of course, has been nearly untouchable since that May 17 debacle: 131 innings, 104 baserunners, 156 strikeouts, 1.37 ERA, .470 opponents’ OPS. One little piece of trivia: Kershaw, who allowed three triples in the second inning May 17, hasn’t allowed a triple since.
Asher B. Garber
I, for one, would never buy furniture from a store called Unpainted Huffhines.