PHOENIX _ The colors of the rainbow flickered across the lobby at Camelback Ranch. Green to blue to red to yellow to green again _ the light filtered through an L.A. logo carved from bronze and reflected off portraits commemorating Dodgers history.
In a leather chair near the entrance sat a living, breathing connection to that history, an emblem of the sweetness and bitterness entwined in franchise lore, a man who pitched his team to the pennant in 2017 but couldn't protect seven runs of support in the pivotal Game 5 of the World Series.
What do you do when your dream crumbles? Clayton Kershaw packed up his family early last November and returned to Texas. He did not permit himself to wallow. "It's not like life just stops, and I just sat around," Kershaw said. "I don't sit. I don't do that. Ever."
Two weeks after Game 7, he resumed workouts at the gym he built in his home in the suburbs of Dallas. A month after Game 7, he visited Los Angeles on the day of his wedding anniversary to recruit Japanese phenom Shohei Ohtani. "If we get this guy," he told Ellen Kershaw, his wife and the mother of their two children, "it'll be worth it."
Six weeks after Game 7, he went to his old high school and picked up a baseball again.
"What's the alternative?" Kershaw said. "Not getting over it, and just literally stewing on it day after day, and just sitting on it and thinking about 'What if? What if? What could I have done differently?' Is that any way to go about it?"
His friend and former catcher, A.J. Ellis, often remarks how Kershaw tunnels into five-day cycles. He does not luxuriate in success or dwell on failure. Three days after collapsing at Minute Maid Park, Kershaw blanked the Houston Astros for four innings in a futile attempt at a comeback in Game 7. Kershaw does not look back and does not indulge in nostalgia. That same logic applied this winter, even after finishing one victory short of a title, even as he prepared for what might be his final campaign as a Dodger.
"I understand the fans' frustration," Kershaw said. "I've been a fan. I've seen the Cowboys lose. I've seen the Mavericks lose. I understand you're frustrated. But you'd be even more frustrated if the team didn't show up the next year, either. You've got to go play. We've got to go compete.
"I mean, the alternative isn't great. To just sit there and be depressed?"
Kershaw does not traffic in half-measures. When the free-agent market stalled this offseason, Kershaw emerged as a budding leader of the labor force. He follows a rigid schedule at the ballpark and loathes detours from it.
While playing catch during the winter, "if he makes a bad throw, the next throw is right at your chest," workout partner Chris Young said. On the mound, "there's not a single person on this friggin' planet he's scared to face," teammate Alex Wood said.
They will hang a portrait of him in this lobby some day. They will hang No. 22 along the third deck of Dodger Stadium. They will call him onto a stage in Cooperstown. His teammates will tell their kids they knew the greatest pitcher of their generation _ and, maybe they will say, the greatest who ever lived.
In a game that involves much uncertainty, these things feel inevitable.
But what about next year?
