Will playoffs take Dodgers over the moon?

Jon SooHoo/Los Angeles Dodgers

By Jon Weisman

And now, it’s time to come out of our safe place.

On some level, the past four days have been the best of the year. We’ve camped out on Tranquility Base, gazing lovingly at our home planet and longingly at the world beyond. We’ve tested our craft, tested ourselves — as if we could ever completely test ourselves — for the great unknown.

Now all we have to do is make it to Mars.

There’s no escaping the idea that this voyage feels all-or-nothing. Revelry or rage. Come home with red dust on our shoes or don’t come home at all. Odds don’t matter, excuses don’t matter, ghosts in the machine don’t matter.

It starts at 6:45 p.m., when nine Dodgers take the field tonight but all eyes telescope to Clayton Kershaw, who must somehow rewrite his postseason unfairly tale to his favor. No turning back. As he goes, so go our hearts. We know he can do this. We know this.

Our dream is so close and so far away, it’s hard to reconcile. The pain is being able to reach so near and not yet be able to touch and not know if we will. We’re not doing this in the vacuum of space. We’re racing against seven other ships, all with the same desire, some even more desperate.

In less than a month, we’ll know if we’re special or ordinary. A team for the ages, or a team for the ashes.

I almost hate to take that next step, to leave our peace. Every next movement fraught with tension, every beat rippling into the void, a rocket perilously, furiously zooming to soar over and beyond the expanding black hole.

But with all the risk of catastrophe, we wouldn’t have it any other way. There is no journey like this one, no glory like the glory in that big, starry night.