The Dodgers were in town for a weekend series. I bought tickets a while back for the Friday night game. Ordinarily I’d wait to see how the rotation lined up so that I could see Kershaw if he was pitching here. But with the Dodgers coming here in September, I didn’t want to miss football. Yes, Notre Dame had one of their two easiest opponents of the year, but we’re hopefully playing fourteen games this season. I didn’t want to miss any. As it turns out, the Sunday game got moved to the night game. If Kershaw had pitched on Sunday, I probably would have gone. That’s a combination of my waning interest in the NFL (between the Jets having their second USC quarterback in a decade and the Patriots cheating and winning all the time, college football is so much more fun) and the NFL’s poor scheduling. Hold on, I have an NFL rant:
The NFL needs to hire a Vice President of Common Sense for their scheduling. They just had ten early afternoon games and three late afternoon games. I’m fine with splitting up the Los Angeles and Bay Area teams, but they easily could have moved at least two of Seattle at Pittsburgh, Arizona at Baltimore, and New England at Miami to the late afternoon and gotten a better split with the afternoon games. Other than splitting up the Los Angeles and Bay Area teams, why do teams from the Pacific time zone have to play in the early afternoon? Why not have the Dolphins play their home games in September in the late afternoon when it won’t be so hot? That’s it for my NFL rant.
Anyway, Dodgers-Mets worked out well for me. Clayton Keshaw ended up pitching on Friday night. It was also Catholic Night at Citi Field, which I didn’t realize when I bought the tickets. My former student Patrick got picked in a lottery to throw out the first pitch. I had bought the tickets thinking that my dad would go with me, but he was not feeling up to it. I offered them to four people, but they were all going out of town for the weekend for weddings and family birthdays and stuff like that. So I just ended up selling the extra ticket. Even though it was the Dodgers, I would have just sold both of them, but I didn’t want to miss Patrick throwing out the first pitch or Clayton Kershaw throwing many pitches.
As it turned out, I missed Patrick’s pitch. I took the Long Island Railroad (or the lirr, as another former student called it). I had to change at Woodside and get a 6:07 train. I thought I’d be fine. The train was a little bit delayed, but it wasn’t too bad. The problem was when I got to Citi Field. I walked from the train and was right outside the stadium at about 6:25. The lines to get in at the rotunda where ridiculous. I’m pretty sure that’s where I’ve entered the stadium for all 22 previous games that I had been to there. I was hoping that pretty much everybody goes in there and if I tried another gate, the lines would not be so crazy. I was wrong. The lines were terrible everywhere. I probably would have been better off just waiting to get in at the rotunda. I ended up getting in around 6:55, about five minutes after his pitch. I felt really bad. His mother, who I’ll call, um, Mrs. Patrick since I don’t use last names of people I know on the blog, showed me the video. I had reminded Patrick of Derek Jeter’s advice to George Bush before Game 3 of the 2001 World Series, but his catcher was some girl that he hadn’t met before and she asked him not to throw it too hard so he didn’t, which meant that he bounced it. If one of the Mets was catching it, he could have fired it in there. He did get to throw it from the mound, though. I was thinking they'd make him throw it from the grass in front of the mound.
Anyway, the game got off to a bad start. Clayton Kershaw gave up a home run to the second batter of the game, J.D. Davis, and I worried that this would be one of those silly 2019 games where everybody is hitting home runs. Fortunately for Clayton Kershaw’s two biggest fans, me and Patrick’s sister/my former student Briana, that was not the case. Kershaw mowed down the Mets for the next five innings. He ran out of gas in the seventh and left with one out and the bases loaded (I thought Roberts left him in for a batter too long). Joe Kelly allowed one of the inherited runners to score. So Kershaw’s line was six and a third with two runs on four hits, three walks, and five strikeouts. He was in line for a win thanks to a four-run fourth (with an RBI singe from former Notre Dame baseball player A.J. Pollack and a three-run home run from Dodgers’ top prospect Gavin Lux) and a three-run seventh (Chris Taylor had a two-run double and Cody Bellinger drove him in with a single). Edwin Rios added a two-run home run in the eighth and the Dodgers won 9-2.
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| This was my view for a couple of innings. This was Kershaw's first pitch. He got an easy out here. |
I only watched a couple of innings from my real seat. Then I went down to say hello to Patrick, Briana, and Mr. and Mrs. Patrick/Briana. I didn’t realize that they were sitting with a whole group of people who were there for Catholic Night. Two more of my former students, Michaela and Fiona were there. It was good to see all of them. There were empty seats nearby so I sat with them after talking up on the concourse for a bit. I only had a hot dog to eat. It was good, but it was no Dodger Dog. I opted not to have a beer. It would have been a little weird to drink in front of former students who are all in the 16-18 range. If they were 21, I would have offered to buy them a beer. I did have a victory Summer Ale when I got home.
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| Briana and Patrick are easily two of the best students I've ever taught and they're even better people. When I signed Briana's yearbook, I said that she was the Clayton Kershaw of students that I've taught. |
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| I made this for Briana when she graduated. FanGraphs did most of the work for me, but I had to do a little work to include playoffs. |
Patrick is a senior so we talked about the whole process of applying to colleges (Briana is a junior so she’ll be doing it next year). He’s going to have plenty of good options. It made me think about what I would do if I was a senior in high school applying to college now. Back in 2001-2002, I applied to four schools and I really didn’t consider sports at all. That was a mistake. For me to have the best possible college experience, sports needed to be part of that. I wanted to go to Georgetown, but that had nothing to do with the basketball team (they hadn’t been particularly good since Iverson). And the other schools I applied to were not big time sports schools. I would also lean strongly toward Catholic schools (three of the four schools I applied to were Catholic, I’ll refrain from making a joke about how they were all Jesuit). Of course, I ended up at Notre Dame eventually for the two good Charlie Weis years. If we assume that I’m a high school senior who was a Notre Dame fan, Notre Dame is obviously my first choice. I think Villanova would be my second choice. If I want a Catholic school with good sports, they’re the clear second choice (you could argue their basketball team could make it the first choice, but I’ll say Notre Dame’s football/basketball combination plus academics keeps it number one). After that, I don’t really know where else I’d apply. I mean, I guess I’d apply to Boston College, maybe. You know, if I didn’t get into Notre Dame and wanted to go to a school that loses to Notre Dame all the time (yes, I know they used to beat us in football way too often, but we’ve won the last six in football and they can’t beat us in basketball even when we’re bad). I guess I’d look into the other Catholic schools in the Big East. St. Joe’s in Philadelphia has had some success in basketball and isn’t too far away. Gonzaga has a great basketball program, but I couldn’t see going all the way out to the west coast unless I was going to the Los Angeles area. I wouldn’t have too much interest in other major football schools. I just can’t picture having any allegiance to a college football team other than Notre Dame. I mean, I always root for the service academies as long as they’re not playing Notre Dame, but I am clearly not meant for the military. If I was going to consider any big state schools, they would be Virginia (the campus is great and they’re not completely detestable like Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Florida State, etc.) and UCLA (I could go to Dodger games, I could watch football games in the Rose Bowl, and USC would still be my rival). Anyway, hopefully Patrick ends up at the right place right away, unlike me.
That was probably my last game of the season. If the Dodgers make it to the World Series and end up playing the Yankees, I’ll look into getting tickets, but I’m not optimistic about the prices being reasonable enough for me to go. Here are the updated numbers for Kershaw with me in attendance:
10 starts (Citi Field in 2009 and Washington in 2010 before the blog, 2013 in Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia, 2015 at Citi Field, 2016 at Citi Field and Yankee Stadium, 2018 at Citi Field, and this game at Citi Field), 2 pinch hit appearances (0-1 with a sacrifice bunt)
Dodgers: 11-1 (the loss came in the game where he unsuccessfully pinch hit)
Kershaw's Win-Loss: 5-0
65 innings
1.25 ERA
68 strikeouts
38 hits
14 walks
0.80 WHIP
2 complete game shutouts
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