As Riders players wrapped for Clayton KershawLast Thursday, retired press conference, Freddie Freeman The Kershaw family melted to a row of seats at the front of the room.
He wanted Kershaw’s wife, Ellen, and their four children in front of the launcher on the right When he sat in the platform at the Dodger stadium.
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If not, how, could Freeman joked, could they make the future temple of fame cry?
It turned out that, in a 14 -minute address announcing his baseball retirement at the end of this season, Kershaw was smothered from behind the microphone. But, it happened first when he addressed his teammates. They told him, were who he was going to miss him the most.
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“The most difficult is the teammates, so I’m not going to even look at you in the eye,” said Kershaw, the eyes quickly becoming red. “Just you sit in this room, you mean so much for me. We have so much fun. I’ll miss him. “
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“The match in itself, I will miss a lot, but I will be good without it,” he added later. “I think the difficult part is the feeling after a victory, celebrating with you. It’s quite special.”
A few days later, this message continues to repercussions.
For dodgers, it served as a reminder and reset.
Since early July, the team has lived in a world covered by frustration and has been twisted with repeated misery. Many players were injured or unusually sagging. The team as a whole endured an extended sub500 skid. Behind the inconsistent offensive and the pitch of unreliable enclosures, a large division advance has decreased. Visions of the size of 120 were doubled.
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In the middle of this crisis, the attention of the club derived. From team production to individual mechanics. From collective emergency to internal dissatisfaction.
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“Everyone in this team was so busy this year trying to improve their job,” said the third basic player Max MUNCY said, “That sometimes we forget this moment to drag and take advantage of what we are going through.”
Or, as Kershaw said After its last Dodger Stadium stadium in the regular season Friday, “the collective effort to do something hard together.”
“All this is so impactful, so significant,” said Kershaw.
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And if it had disappeared during the depths of the most difficult summer summer months, Kershaw’s retirement pushed it back to the fore.
“I think it helps to reset,” said Muncy. “During seven, eight months, you see yourself every day and sometimes you take a little for granted … This is not something that someone has forgotten. But sometimes you need a refreshment. I think it was a good time for that.”
Do not confuse it as a “win one for Kersh!” attitude. The Dodgers insisted that they did not need additional motivation to defend their title, even after what was a turbulent rehearsal campaign.
However, players and coaches recently noted their efforts this year have sometimes moved. The unit they praised during the championship of last year had not always been reproduced. A veil was thrown on a large part of the second half.
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“When you don’t win any games, it’s not fun,” said veteran field player Miguel Rojas earlier this month. “But in the end, we have to put it all aside. … We have to come here and have fun in the clubhouse, whatever the situation.”
The Dodgers did it and more last weekend, when a celebration of Kershaw – which included an almost attendance at the team’s scale at its press conference Thursday, several ovations on the field Friday and the address of Kershaw at the Dodger stadium on Sunday – was accompanied by three victories in four against San Francisco Giantts.
“Watching him choke when he started talking about the teammates – it was just a crazy feeling in this room,” said Tyler Glasnow launcher on Thursday’s announcement.
Addition of Muncy: “You hear when he talks about what he will miss, what he appreciates most: it’s part of the team. It’s with guys. It’s in the clubhouse.
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“To hear a guy like him, reinforce this, I think it’s a good message for many people to hear.”
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In Muncy’s estimate, the Dodgers “saw the reflection of this on the field” recently, after having passed on the edge of a division title (their magic number entering Monday was three with a record of 10-4 in the past two weeks.
“There was more effort to try to take advantage of the moments,” said Muncy. “Make sure we always get our job, but try to enjoy the moments.”
The Dodgers carried out a similar transformation in October, when they used their first round leave To build the kind of cohesion They had missed Previous failures of eliminations – one that the team has constantly credited in its possible race towards the World Series.
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Kershaw’s retirement may have provided a similar spark, stressing the importance of such an intangible dynamic while raising the gloom that had darkened the last two months of the team.
“Obviously there have been a lot to point (towards this season), with regard to adversities, that all the teams are going through,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But I think that as we got to the other side … The guys stayed together and they came out stronger, which is most of the time, that’s what adversity does.”
No more adversity, of course, is in advance.
The dodgers finished the weekend on a sour note, with Blake Treinen suffering from Last implosion of enclosures of lifts in a loss of 3-1 Sunday. They will always enter the playoffs in a somewhat unstable place, needing to sail in a rescue body in difficulty and overcome a Hand injury to the receiver Will Smith.
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This means that, as last year, their path until October will probably not be fluid.
That after a second half full of frustrations, they will have to rely on a culture that Kershaw stressed and rented, several times during the weekend.
“Having a group of guys together, and somehow understand this and being together, being able to have fun all the time, is really important,” said Kershaw. “The more I get older, the more important it is (I realized). Like, you can’t just spend your day every day and go through emotions. You can’t. It’s too hard, too long to do it. “
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“You have to make the Micgy doing the microphone on the bus. You must have Kiké. You must have all these guys who are able to please us and to energize every day. This is what this group is, and it was an explosion.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
