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Zusatztext "A compelling! well-examined book that exemplifies what occurs behind the scenes. A must-read for fans of the Dodgers and all Los Angeles sports teams. Knight's undercover work is like none other." Informationen zum Autor Molly Knight wrote about baseball for ESPN the Magazine for eight seasons. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine , Glamour , SELF , Baseball Prospectus , and Variety . A native of Los Angeles and lifelong Dodgers fan, she lives in LA. The Best Team Money Can Buy is her first book. Klappentext "The inside-the-clubhouse story of two tumultuous years when the Los Angeles Dodgers were re-made from top to bottom, from the ownership of the team to management to the players on the field, becoming the most talked-about and most colorful team in baseball"--The Best Team Money Can Buy PROLOGUE I didn’t think Clayton Kershaw would lose. Though we’d spoken many times for this book during the Dodgers’ crazy 2013 season, I waited until before Game 5 of the National League Championship Series—when his team was one loss away from elimination—to ask him if we could sit down for an extended interview about everything that had happened after the World Series was over. He agreed. The Dodgers won later that day to force the series back to St. Louis and keep their season alive. Kershaw had the ball for Game 6. And though Los Angeles trailed in the series three games to two and would have to beat a tough Cardinals team in hostile territory even to sniff a Game 7, everyone around the club assumed that with their ace on the mound victory was a foregone conclusion. After winning the National League’s ERA crown the previous two seasons by posting numbers in the mid 2’s, the twenty-five-year-old lefty had somehow made himself even tougher to hit. When he finished the 2013 regular season weeks earlier with a microscopic 1.83 earned run average, he erased any lingering questions that he was the best pitcher on the planet. There was no such thing as a sure win in baseball. But sending Clayton Kershaw to the mound in an elimination game was as close as it got. And then it all went sideways. Kershaw was torched for seven runs in four innings in a game that defied explanation. There would be no Game 7 after all. The Dodgers were out, having lost to the Cardinals by the same score as if they had forfeited: 9–0. Kershaw took it hard, showing no interest in appreciating his role in taking the Dodgers the closest they had been to a World Series berth in twenty-five years; he preferred to blame himself for their failure to get there because his wiring didn’t allow him any other choice. Two weeks later, the Red Sox beat the Cardinals to become world champions. Two weeks after that Kershaw won the National League’s Cy Young Award for the second time in three seasons. I wondered if he could ever enjoy a plaque he would gladly trade to get just one game back. I decided to wait a month to reach out about our sit-down, hoping to allow enough time for the sting of Game 6 to fade, even just a little. But then Thanksgiving rolled around, and in December he and his wife, Ellen, spent three weeks in Zambia to oversee the work their foundation did with orphans there. Christmas came and went and so did New Year’s. With spring training approaching, I finally sent him a text message during the first week of January. Would he still be interested in getting together to talk for the book? Sounds great, he replied. And then he asked when I could come to Dallas, where he lives in the off-season. He told me he had to fly to Florida the following Monday, January 13, so we agreed that I’d come out from Los Angeles on Tuesday night and we’d meet on Wednesday. When I l...
