Experience Dodgers' title through Kershaw
Nobody was happier than L.A.'s franchise player
After 32 years -- more than three decades after Kirk Gibson's homer, Orel Hershiser's MVP pitching and Tommy Lasorda doing this -- the Dodgers are World Series champions. They beat the Rays, 3-1, on Tuesday night and won the Series 4 games to 2. Everybody was happy, from LeBron James to legendary broadcaster Vin Scully to every single Dodgers player and coach on the field.
But, of course, the most emotional player on the team had to be longest-tenured Dodger Clayton Kershaw. He was drafted by the team in 2006 and has been playing in the Majors for them since 2008. He was baseball's wunderkind, the next Sandy Koufax, a future Hall of Famer. But the one thing he couldn't get? A World Series ring.
Even though the team had been good and on the precipice the last few seasons, it had always come up short, and Kershaw -- the team's best pitcher -- seemed to always get the blame. He had some bad starts (although probably not as bad as you think). But in the 2020 playoffs, Kershaw has been maybe better than he's ever been: He struck out 13 in eight scoreless innings in the Wild Card Series and won twice in the Fall Classic -- even making people think he could take home MVP honors.
So, when they won, when Kershaw finally won, there were A LOT of emotions. You can check out the entire sequence in the main clip above. And once he got around his teammates, he could barely hold it together.
His new favorite thing to hold.
Well, second favorite.