There's a man goin' round takin' names.
That man is Clayton Kershaw, and if there's any person on the planet you want on the mound to send your team to the World Series, it's him.
If you had asked Dodgers personnel back in February if they could choose any pitcher to be on the mound in order to punch their ticket to the World Series, all answers would be exactly the same: "Kershaw."
The three-time National League Cy Young Award winner and 2014 MVP won 18 games this season, despite missing nearly two months due to a back injury.
His 2.31 ERA led the league and he still finished with over 200 strikeouts on the season. Kershaw has been the best pitcher in baseball for the last decade, and it really isn't close.
Ah, but here's the rub.
Kershaw has a checkered playoff past, littered with postseason disappointment, seventh inning curses, and the Cardinals and the Cubs.
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In addition to those spectacular regular season numbers this year, Kershaw also allowed the most home runs than he ever has before.
For those that believed that was an anomaly, he's allowed another five long balls in just two postseason starts thus far.
Critics will pan that Kershaw is not the same pitcher he was before his back injury in late July. They look at his final starts in the regular season—two of which he allowed just one run—and also his recent string of starts in the playoffs.
However, Kershaw's career postseason ERA is 4.57, it's currently 4.76 after starting Game 1's in both the NLDS and NLCS, respectively. Essentially, he's not far off his playoff average.
Fortunately for Kershaw, his team won both of his starts.
In order for Kershaw to catapult his team to their first World Series since 1988, he will need to have a more dominant performance like he did in Game 2 at Wrigley Field last year.
In that start, Kershaw allowed just two hits over seven shutout innings, leveling the series as it shifted back to Los Angeles.
However, in Game 6, with his team facing elimination, Kershaw got shelled. Allowing seven hits, including two home runs in a 5-0 shutout by the Cubs.
As fate would have it, Kershaw has been on the mound three different times when his team has been eliminated from the postseason, in addition to a handful of other playoff failures that have haunted the future Hall of Fame throughout his career.
Kershaw is synonymous with the Dodgers postseason downfalls over the course of the last decade. Therefore, Thursday's start in Game 5 at Wrigley Field is the absolute best time to remove the proverbial monkey off his back.
Despite the fact that Kershaw may go down as the greatest Dodgers' pitcher of all-time, the foundation of his legacy will be forged in playoff pictures of his six-foot, four-inch frame, hunched over on the mound, head hung low, as he watches a backbreaking home run fly out of the ballpark.
The only way to remove that image from the mind's eye is to put his team on his no-longer-injured-back, and carry them to the World Series. Now is the opportunity to do it.
"We're very comfortable, very confident," said Dodgers' manager Dave Roberts of Kershaw taking the mound in Game 5. "We expect Clayton to go out there focused. He's going to help us win a baseball game tonight."
The World Series starts in five short days, and if Kershaw does what we all believe he can do, he will be on the mound for Game 1 at Dodger Stadium next Tuesday.
If not, we will be left with another lasting image of a defeated Kershaw in the dugout, after yet another postseason disappointment.
The Cubs' have Jon Lester and Kyle Hendricks lurking and Joe Maddon would like nothing more than to unleash them in Games 6 and 7 at Dodger Stadium.
The time is now Dodgers. Not Saturday, not Sunday, but now.
They say that some moments are good, some are great, and some are even worth writing about.
This time tomorrow, I hope to be writing about Clayton Kershaw's pennant winning moment.
