San Diego Padres third baseman Chase Headley fouled off three pitches from Clayton Kershaw with two strikes in the sixth inning. Headley did the same thing in the first inning only to strike out on an 88 mph slider, so there was no real sense of doom or foreboding here.
Kershaw was one out away from recording his 42nd consecutive scoreless inning. He still was quite a ways from Orel Hershiser’s 59 scoreless innings, but with each pitch and each inning that was coming more and more real. In a way all of this seemed appropriate. When Hershiser broke Don Drysdale’s record of 58 consecutive scoreless innings in 1988, Drysdale was a broadcaster for the team. Now, Hershiser is a broadcaster for the team.
As in the first inning Kershaw threw an 88 mph slider to Headley, and this time Headley did not miss it. The groan from the 50,332 fans as the ball came of the bat was clearly audible. As the ball flew towards the pavilion seats in left-centerfield, the groans turned into an urging for the ball to stay in the park, as if the crowd were trying to will Kershaw’s scoreless streak to remain intact by their sheer will.
But no chance. The ball cleared the wall, and the disappointment was heard loud and clear. But rather than wallow, the fans stood up and cheered in appreciation of the 41 scoreless innings. Kershaw had no choice but to shake it off.
“Headley is a good hitter,” Kershaw told Alana Rizzo after the game. “He put a good swing on it.”
I said on the latest episode of the B&J Podcast that Clayton Kershaw would go down as the greatest pitcher ever. Whether or not that actually happens, we are witnessing a pitcher having one the most dominant stretches ever seen.
Kershaw was just selected for his fourth consecutive All Star game. He won two of the last three National League Cy Young Awards, coming in second to one-year wonder R.A. Dickey in the other year. For three consecutive seasons he led the Majors in ERA.
And, much to the horror of hitters around the league, Kershaw may be having his best season yet. Just take a look at his WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched). Last season he lead the Majors with a 0.915 WHIP. Prior to this game he was at 0.870 which would put him in the top 25 single-season WHIP ever.
Despite missing more than a month, Kershaw has already amassed 126 strikeouts. He’s striking out 11.9 batters per nine innings, the most in the Majors. He’s only giving up 1.2 walks per nine innings.
In other words you can’t hit him, and he doesn’t give up walks.
Perhaps there was a sign that Kershaw’s quest would come to a screeching halt. There was a snafu to the Hello Kitty travel mug giveaway that was supposed to happen tonight. According to Jill Painter:
#Dodgers booed again over 2nd Hello Kitty travel mug snafu announcement. Heard truck got in accident on way to stadium. Can't make this up
This is Frank McCourt-esque levels of bumbling. Moral of the story? To channel the great Clan of Wu Tang, Hello Kitty ain’t nuttin’ to fuck wit’.
With the 2-1 win, the Dodgers take a one-game lead over the Giants who lost to the Athletics 6-1 earlier in the day.
The only reason I really look forward to my birthday is that I get time off from work and that I usually rent an Airbnb out in the middle of the desert in the Joshua Tree vicinity with a pool, hot tub, and no one around for 5 acres. So here I am in Landers (or a bit away from it really) whose claim to fame was that it was the epicenter of a 7.3 earthquake in 1992 just hours before a separate 6.5 earthquake centered in Big Bear hit on a Sunday morning. Wild stuff.
I arrived here yesterday, and on the way had to stop to get gas. Since this stupid fucking illegal war with Iran has driven gas prices sky high again, I’ve mostly been back on public transit again because, fuck that. There I was at the Arco station jaw agape as the $30 went to $40 and on up until it landed at $72 for 13 gallons of gas. Yes, the “cheap” gas.
I’m going to be spending most of the time in or around the pool trying to finish Schattenfroh by Michael Lentz. I’m at around page 604, so I have about 400 more pages to go. I’ll be honest — I have no fucking clue what’s going on in the book. It’s a slow, slow read and demands your attention but not in a painstaking way. It’s a very enjoyable read, but I honestly don’t know how we get from one part to the next. Instead of trying to make sense of it, I’m just riding the wave, going where it’s taking me and try to make sense of it later.
I’ve started working on a couple of things with myself and hope to get better at as I begin my 48th year on this planet: I have started to journal more. It’s the most mundane scatterbrained thing. I hope it doesn’t cause someone’s head to explode when they go through my journals after I’m dead. (How cute. I think I have any importance that people will actually read what I write rather than just dispose it like they should.)
I need to curb my YouTube addiction. I don’t watch tv shows. I don’t watch sports all that much. I don’t use TikTok. I only doomscroll through Facebook at 3 am after I have woken up to take a piss. I am no longer perpetually online. But I will sit down and waste hours upon hours watching YouTube videos. I really need to get that in check.
That’s all I’ve got. Overall, I’m not happy, but I’m not completely depressed. Let’s just call it nonplussed. For someone who feels like a stranger in his own country, I guess that’s about as good as we can hope for.
Occasionally, after reading certain books, when his disgust for daily life became particularly marked, he longed for the lenitive hours immersed in a cloister…
There is just a clause in the above sentence in the first chapter for J.-K. Huysman’s The Damned (Là-Bas) that really stuck out to me: “when his disgust for daily life became particularly marked.”
I had to go back to work today after two weeks off. The first week I did a road trip that culminated in being in a cabin for two days in Choteau, Montana that had a hot tub. It was nice to sit in the hot jets while it was 18F (-8C) outside. Then I meandered my way home before just doing nothing for the second week. Just sitting with my cats, sleep, and tell myself I was going to mop my floors before doing none of that.
After these weeks of doing a whole bunch of nothing, to my horror it was time to go back to work. The dread of walking into my office which I liken to a monkey cage at the zoo, plugging in my laptop and opening Outlook. Emails filled with complaints. That was the dread that was inside of me.
So I get it when Huysman’s protagonist Durtal has a “disgust for daily life.” It’s certainly reassuring that not a lot has changed over the last 130 or so years.
