the k is for kershaw kountdown continues - giant slayer edition!

clayton kershaw made his sixth appearance of the 2025 season saturday night against the giants at dodger stadium, so i am pleased to be able to post another edition of the k is for kershaw kountdown as we track his progress to the 3,000 strikeout milestone.

coming off his best start of the season, kershaw registered another solid outing, going seven innings without allowing a run (matching the best outing by a dodger starter this season) and striking out five giants in the process. those 5 nocal's he k'd bring his season strikeout total to 20, and his career total to 2,988.

in honor of his performance, here are five cards (not seen on this blog before) from my collection to represent strikeouts number 2,984 through 2,988.

2,984 - 2024 topps finest

2,985 - 2014 topps wins leaders walmart blue parallel

2,986 - 2018 topps big league nl whip leaders gold parallel

2,987 - 2019 topps heritage 1970 scratchoff

2,988 - 2019 topps high tek

kershaw's night included allowing only three hits and just one walk to go with his five strikeouts. he faced the minimum number of batters through the first two innings (thanks to a walk-canceling double play) and then registered a strikeout in each of his last five frames. it was a low stress outing, as the dodgers piled on the runs early, and the giants did not mount any sort of rally against kershaw whatsoever.

kershaw's performance saturday night also reclaimed solo possession of first place in the national league west for the dodgers after they lost the series opener to the giants on friday and fell into a tie with their division rivals. it's worth noting that kershaw has struck out more players pitching against the giants than any other team, although that's not really a surprise given the old unbalanced schedules that teams would play.

here are some non-kershaw cards - starting with a 2007 topps moments & milestones russell (russ) martin card

martin was the catcher for kershaw's debut back in 2008. i would like to see kershaw asked to name the starters who were behind him that day because i sure as heck didn't recall a dodger named luis maza who started that game at second base.

seeing the 2019 topps heritage insert above referring to kershaw as "team captain" got me thinking about austin barnes. i recently read a quote from mookie betts - it may have been on a card back - that barnes (who served as kershaw's unofficial personal catcher for a few seasons) was the team captain of late. of course, he was recently released by the club. here's a 2021 topps big league rainbow foil parallel that features barnes and company as they celebrate the 2020 world series win

that is barnes, of course, in the catcher's gear. he is part of a very short list of dodger catchers (john roseboro, rick dempsey, and will smith are the others) to catch the final out of a dodger world series victory.

of course, you can't mention dodger catchers and kershaw without thinking of a.j. ellis. here is his 2013 topps gold parallel card

that features kershaw prominently.

kershaw is still in 20th place on the all-time leader board, and he will remain there unless he passes john smoltz (or is himself passed). smoltz has a career strikeout total of 3,084 and so kershaw is now 96 k's behind smoltz, but just 12 away from the 3,000 milestone. for what it's worth, he has moved past smoltz on the all-time wins leaderboard and is now tied with mark buehrle and rick reuschel with 214.

kershaw should be back on the mound later this week against the padres. know that when he makes his next start, i will be back to update the kountdown soon thereafter. stay tuned! 

the almost daily dodger - a.j. ellis

here's a 2015 topps rainbow foil parallel card of former dodger catcher a.j. ellis

you can't see it, but under that chest protector, ellis is wearing number 17.

i've mentioned many times that i associate numbers with players to remember things like lock combinations or license plates. for most of my adult life, number 17 has been len matuszek. at this point i'm not sure why it wasn't carl erskine, but there's no going back now. even as ellis claimed the number for seven seasons, i never strayed from matuszek. 

these days, there is a new guy on the club wearing 17

and he did something in his first year with the club that had never been done before (yes, i own one of the 653,757 copies of his topps now 50/50 card. and yes, that is the actual print run number).

i think matuszek's days are finally numbered.

let them eat pi

i know that this is the walmart blue parallel

of a.j. ellis' 2013 topps card, but it was what i had handy. i remember when this card came out and some folks were touting this as a "sparkle" variation. remember those? topps would actually add a sun "sparkle" to the photos of some cards as a scarce variant. i don't think there were actually any sparkle variations in 2013 topps, but i will admit when i first saw the ellis card my thoughts were "clayton kershaw! sparkle!" in that order.

anyway, the card is being featured today because it is number 314 in the set

and today is march 14th, or 3/14, which is celebrated in some circles as "pi day" thanks to the endless constant representing the relationship between a circle's circumference and it's diameter. speaking of circles, here's a truly scarce circle i added to my steve garvey collection last fall:

that is a 1978 saga disc. here's the back:

saga, from what i can tell, was a food service and restaurant company that ran cafeterias at colleges and branched out to restaurant ownership before being acquired by the marriott company in the 1980's. one of the restaurants that saga owned was the black angus stable of steakhouses, which in the 90's was known to be the home of the "square cow fun bar". another holding of the saga corporation was straw hat pizza, which is another sort of pie.

the saga discs from 1978 use a similar design to the big-t/tastee-freez design, but are way harder to track down. i had a saved search for years before this garvey was posted, and was shocked to see it posted for less than $10. now my attention is turned to the 1977 msa customized garvey disc. 

anyway, i know that the circumference of the disc is 10.6 inches thanks to its 3.375 inch diameter and using 3.14159 as the value of pi. as a side note, i know those last three digits of pi thanks to mad magazine of all things.

six days to go until the regular season begins in seoul!

letter rip

seeing fuji's now not so recent post got me thinking about how i would represent my blog name with players and cards. his post was in response to nacho grande's original post that used board games. as fuji said, "challenge accepted"!

c - ron cey (2005 playoff prestige al east champions)

a - walt alston (2005 topps dem bums)

r - bill russell (2014 topps archives fan favorites autograph)

d - davey lopes (1981 topps)

s - steve garvey (2022 leaf in the game used sports hall of fame caliber silver relic)

a - don aase (1991 fleer)

s - reggie smith (1978 topps)

i - kazuhisa ishii (2003 playoff absolute memorabilia tools of the trade)

s - don sutton (2021 topps chrome platinum anniversary)

e - andre ethier (2013 topps archives day-glo parallel)

e - scott erickson (2005 topps total)

t - derrel thomas (1979 o-pee-chee)

h - charlie hough (2018 topps archives snapshots)

e - aj ellis (2013 topps)

m - rick monday (1979 topps)

yes, that ethier card really is the orange parallel. also, i was happy to get clayton kershaw in there, even if it was just as a lurker on aj ellis' card.

if i went all last names, don drysdale and duke snider would replace lopes and garvey up top. i can get duke in if i were to apply this challenge to my first blog's name:

g - steve garvey 

a - walt alston

r - jackie robinson (2010 topps turkey red)

v - fernando valenzuela (2017 topps 1987 all-star)

e - andre ethier 

y - steve yeager (2004 upper deck legends timeless teams gold)

c - ron cey

e - scott erickson

y - eric young (1999 upper deck)

r - bill russell

u - julio urias (2019 topps chrome sapphire edition)

s - reggie smith

s - don sutton 

e - aj ellis 

l - tom lasorda (2001 topps tribute patch)

l - lee lacy (1976 topps)

l - davey lopes 

o - al oliver (2005 donruss throwback threads throwback collection)

p - mike piazza (1996 score big bats)

e - bruce edwards (1951 bowman)

s - duke snider (1980-87 sspc baseball immortals)

fun stuff. thanks for the inspiration nachos and fuji!