TORONTO — Standing with his back to the diamond, heart hammering as he warmed up for the final game of his career, Clayton Kershaw peered over his shoulder as Toronto Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk rolled into a double play in the 11th inning of Game 7 of the World Series. Inside the maelstrom of Rogers Centre, preparing for an emergency, Kershaw had lost track of the outs. He assumed he was about to enter the game when he caught the wild-eyed glare of Los Angeles Dodgers bullpen coach Josh Bard.
“We just won the World Series!” Bard said.
“Are you sure?” Kershaw said.
Bard was. They did. And so Kershaw did not, exactly, ride off into the sunset. He sprinted into a dogpile, shouting as he lumbered in from the bullpen, thrilled to call himself a three-time champion. His eyes filled with tears afterward. Perhaps it was the sting of champagne. Or perhaps it was the perspective on how lucky he felt to retire on this note.
“It’s not a sad feeling,” Kershaw said inside the visitors’ clubhouse after the game. “Because … how cool? I will forever, for the rest of my life, be able to say that we won Game 7 of the World Series in the last game I ever played. You can’t script that. You can’t write it up. Even if I wasn’t throwing 88 mph, I still would be done. It’s just the perfect way to end it.”
For the past six weeks, after he announced that he would retire at the end of the season after 18 seasons with the Dodgers, Kershaw had known this day would come. But his itinerary called for one more activity with the team. He would take part in the parade through downtown Los Angeles on Monday. Along the route, the people of his adopted city will get a chance to say goodbye and salute him.
A few years before Kershaw decided to retire, I called his closest friend in baseball. A.J. Ellis spent seven seasons as Kershaw’s catcher and confidant. They had shared untold hours talking about the game, their faith, their families. So I figured it was worth asking: What did Ellis still want to know about Kershaw?
“At this point, it’s like: What keeps driving him?” Ellis said. “And what keeps him coming back?”
By then, as I began reporting a book about Kershaw in the months after the 2022 season, he had “accomplished everything he can on a baseball field,” Ellis said: Three National League Cy Young awards, the first pitcher to win the National League MVP since Bob Gibson, the annual invitations to the All-Star Game. A World Series championship in 2020 that ended his painful phase as the postseason’s Hamlet.
His children were getting older, and he felt himself torn between pitching in Los Angeles and being a parent at his home in Dallas. And then, Ellis mentioned, “in the last decade, the physical toll on his body,” the injuries to his back and his shoulder and his elbow.
“What keeps bringing him back for the next year?” Ellis said. “What’s the drive? I think that would be an interesting thing for him to verbalize.”
During a conversation with Kershaw that next spring, I asked him if he had plotted out an endgame. There was one scenario that came to mind, he said.
“I’ll tell you what, if we were to win another World Series, I think I can’t imagine ending it any better than that,” he said. “I can’t imagine just having that feeling one more time.”
A year later, Kershaw got to experience that feeling, but it came from the periphery. He missed most of 2024 as he recovered from shoulder surgery and then injured his foot. He wasn’t healthy enough to pitch in October. While he delighted in taking part in last year’s parade, he felt he hadn’t done enough to merit inclusion. “I just want one more run,” he told me during the 2024 postseason.
He got that this year. Kershaw managed to make 22 starts with a 3.36 ERA this season. Only Yoshinobu Yamamoto threw more innings for the Dodgers. Kershaw added to his case for being the best pitcher of his generation.
“I can’t imagine a better way to go out than to pop bottles with this group… BACK-TO-BACK CHAMPS!”
Clayton Kershaw leads the champagne celebration for the @Dodgers 🍾 pic.twitter.com/6fP7JqtDxh
— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) November 2, 2025
When it comes to the history of the Dodgers, it feels foolish to rank players using statistics. After all, this is the franchise of Jackie Robinson and Sandy Koufax and Fernando Valenzuela. But in terms of production between the lines, Kershaw is the greatest Dodger of all time. He finished as the franchise’s leader in wins above replacement, according to Baseball-Reference. His 154 ERA+ is tied with Pedro Martinez for the best mark by a starting pitcher in the modern era. He became the 20th member of the 3,000 strikeout club over the summer. He may be one of the last pitchers to win 200 games.
For so much of his career, though, he was defined by his stumbles in October. Whenever Kershaw failed in the postseason, he carried the yoke of that defeat into the winter. It was not until the Dodgers won a title in 2020 that Kershaw realized how much that weight had bogged him down. He assumed the championship would mute all the chatter about him — until, while pitching with a damaged shoulder, he got clobbered by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2023 National League Division Series.
Part of the reason Kershaw underwent shoulder surgery that offseason, rather than retire, was that he felt compelled to succeed one more time in October. “I need to pitch in the postseason better, to end it,” he told me after the 2023 season. “I need to do that better. For my sanity. Just to help the team win. Because I’ve done it. I can do it.”
And he got a chance to do that this year, too. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts tried to stay away from Kershaw throughout the postseason. But as he ran out of pitchers in the 18-inning marathon of Game 3, Roberts had no choice. Kershaw entered a tied game with the bases loaded and two outs. He managed to induce a groundout by outfielder Nathan Lukes. That proved to be the final appearance of his career.
“You can’t script that, either,” Kershaw said. “I’m thankful I got to go back out there and get that last out. To have it be at Dodger Stadium, to have it be a big out, to get to do that as the last one, that’s so cool.”
In the waning days of Kershaw’s career, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman approached him with an offer to stick around as a member of the baseball operations department. Kershaw was flattered by the offer. “I don’t think I have any full-time jobs in my future,” he said. “Except full-time dad.”
His fifth child is due this winter. After Game 7, he ambled around the field with his wife, Ellen, and their kids as they took in the scene. Soon, it would be time to go back to Texas. But first, for his final act in baseball, Clayton Kershaw needed to attend a parade. He will ride off into the sunset in the way he always dreamed of doing, as a champion.