Just Time Doing Its Tick Tick Tick Thing

Meditations on time before and during watching Clayton Kershaw toy with various Mets:

The Dodgers are forever. I started watching baseball in earnest in 1976, when I was seven, and learned the game by memorizing the backs of baseball cards, scouring a cinderblock-sized Baseball Encyclopedia, and devouring various books checked out from the Emma S. Clark Public Library. (Tug McGraw‘s Screwball was an early favorite; so too, if I remember correctly, was an as-told-to book by Carl Mays, the Yankee pitcher who fatally beaned Ray Chapman, because go figure.) It’s amazing to think that when I started watching baseball the Dodgers were only beginning their 19th season in Los Angeles — we’ve been penning this blog almost as long as that. The Dodgers seemed eternal to me then as they do now, an exotic baseball species in their minimalist blue and white ensemble, punctuated by that red number and the white dot on the cap. It’s a uniform so perfect that it’s hard to remember that it’s the product of a lengthy, stop-start evolution and not something, say, handed down by Abner Doubleday on a village green one spring day.

Dodger Stadium really is forever. The Dodgers’ home is as old as the Mets, who are on their third stadium, and somehow it still feels like visiting the future. There’s the strangeness of its setting — who put a mountain in the middle of this endless sprawling city of palm trees? — and the seemingly effortless cool of its jet-age lines and dimensions, with that wavelike pavilion in the outfield and the hexagonal scoreboards always reminding me of Eeno Saarinen somehow. Dodger Stadium is the third-oldest park behind Wrigley and Fenway, but those parks feel like the anachronisms they are while the Dodgers’ home still seems new, and probably always will.

Time moves differently for rookies. As fans we want to believe that people can change in ways experience has taught us they don’t. That journeyman hitter who’s spent eight seasons unable to lay off pitches out of the zone isn’t going to have a eureka moment in his ninth season, no matter what a few extra walks in spring training make us want to believe. At a certain point, players are what they are — they’re only people, after all. But young players are an exception: With them, you sometimes can see the learning curve getting traveled. I was thinking that Monday night watching Brett Baty in the field and at the plate. After his insta-famous first swing in 2022, the game sometimes looked like it was moving a little quickly for Baty, which just meant he was new to all this. But Baty really did look different in spring training, in Syracuse and in L.A. — quicker to the ball in the field, more disciplined sizing up pitches at the plate, and more sure-footed going about every aspect of his business.

Time moves differently for veterans too. It’s been painful watching Eduardo Escobar hit in bad luck when he’s been hitting at all, but watching him navigate the beginning of the Baty era has been an object lesson in both cheer and class. (And since we’re talking third base, how is this the fifth season since David Wright retired? He was here just a minute ago.) It’s never easy to lose your job, let alone to do so because your recent performance is being quantified a zillion different ways and evaluated by thousands and thousands of eyes both professional and amateur. Escobar had a tough 2022 season marked by personal issues I’m glad we don’t know everything about, a bewildering offseason in which he had to look over his shoulder at not only Baty but also Carlos Correa, and now this season has proved trying too. Everything he’s done in response has shown you why he’s revered as a teammate. I’ve grown less sentimental about personnel as I’ve grown older as a fan, but I find myself hoping that Escobar can succeed for us as some combination of designated hitter, platoon player and defensive replacement.

Remember me? Speaking of sentiment, Wednesday’s matinee will feature Max Scherzer against Noah Syndergaard, a matchup of pitchers facing their former teams. It still feels shocking to me that Syndergaard is no longer ours and, if we’re being honest about it, no longer Syndergaard. Remember when he hit two homers in this park? When he came up comparing his mechanics to a trebuchet? When he threw that ungodly slider that made you think someone had found the MLB The Show cheat codes? When he was ready to fight each and every Kansas City Royal? When he grumped to a less-than-convinced Tom Hallion about just trying to throw a fucking fastball? Oh how I loved him — and oh how it pains me to admit that I’ll watch Wednesday’s game a lot more worried about what’s going on with Scherzer’s scapula than with evaluating Syndergaard’s attempt to become a finesse pitcher. That’s partially because Syndergaard now wears the wrong uniform, but it’s also that I can’t bear to think about it. Baseball is about loss and pitchers break, and while I always knew Syndergaard’s UCL would do what so many UCLs have done before, I’ve never quite gotten over it.

Clayton Kershaw doesn’t care about time. Well, at least for one night he didn’t. Kershaw started off Tuesday night watching Jason Heyward botch a Brandon Nimmo flyball for a three-base error, coolly struck out the next three to keep the Mets off the board, and then was essentially untouchable in winning his 200th game. I wish the Mets had won, or done much of anything in not winning, but they had no chance. That was all Kershaw, and one day — though maybe not this day — I’ll tell people I was lucky to see it, and him.