2025 NLDS: Retiring Kershaw reprises rookie role vs. Phillies
by Mark Langill
Time for home movies.
Start the film projector.
The date is Oct. 10, 2008, at Citizens Bank Park.
Rookie left-hander Clayton Kershaw’s postseason debut with the Dodgers had the familiar sounds and graphics of a modern sports telecast, complete with statistically sprinkled commentary from Joe Buck and former Major League catcher Tim McCarver.
Seventeen years later, Kershaw is the last man standing among the active Dodgers and Phillies players from the 2008 National League Championship Series.
As Kershaw inches closer to his retirement at the end of the 2025 season, his Hall of Fame career has come full circle.
His appearance may have changed — from the fresh-faced prospect to the graying bearded veteran — but his role is the same as the one assigned by first-year Dodger manager Joe Torre in 2008 to a 20-year-old rookie who was 5–5 ERA in 22 games (21 starts) during the regular season:
Be prepared for anything.
On Friday, current Dodger manager Dave Roberts confirmed that Kershaw will be on the Dodger roster when Los Angeles opens the NL Division Series on Saturday in Philadelphia. He last worked on Sept. 28 in Seattle when he pitched 5 1/3 scoreless innings in a 6–1 victory over the Mariners.
During the 2025 regular season, Kershaw went 11–2 with a 3.36 ERA in 23 games (22 starts).
When Kershaw took the mound long ago in Philadelphia, there were great expectations for the team’s former №1 draft pick in 2006, who eventually made his Major League debut on May 25, 2008.
But who could expect a regular-season career record of 223–96 and 2.53 ERA in 455 games (451 starts) with 3,052 strikeouts in 2,855 1/3 innings?
Don’t forget the collection of three Cy Young Awards and 2014 NL MVP honors when he went 21–3 with a 1.77 ERA in 27 starts.
On that Friday night long ago in Philadelphia, the stadium sound system didn’t play “Pomp and Circumstance Marches” when Kershaw walked to the mound to start the bottom of the seventh inning with the Dodgers trailing, 8–5. He was the team’s fifth pitcher of the night.
Starter Chad Billingsley, a first-round draft pick in 2003, was shelled for eight runs (seven earned) on eight hits in 2 1/3 innings. Relievers Chan Ho Park, Joe Beimel, James McDonald, Kershaw and Cory Wade held the Phillies at bay, scattering three hits over the final 6 1/3 innings.
The Dodgers were on their way to falling behind 0–2 in the best-of-seven series. Eventually, Philadelphia won the NL pennant with a 7–5 victory in Game 5 at Dodger Stadium.
Replaying Game 2 and the six batters Kershaw faced over the next 1 2/3 scoreless innings provides a historic time capsule and a road map of the comings and goings of a 2008 Dodger roster headlined by Manny Ramirez, the power-hitting outfielder acquired from the Boston Red Sox at the trade deadline.
The outfield behind Kershaw in the seventh inning was Ramirez in left, Matt Kemp in center, and Andre Ethier in right.
The infield included first baseman James Loney, second baseman Jeff Kent, shortstop Rafael Furcal, and Nomar Garciaparra, who had just replaced Casey Blake at third base.
Behind the plate was Russell Martin, who in 2025 would become one of several former teammates to attend Kershaw’s final regular-season start at Dodger Stadium on Sept. 19. The catcher also happily nailed Kershaw with a shaving cream pie on July 27, 2008, during a postgame interview near the Dodger dugout after Kershaw’s first Major League victory, 2–0 decision over the Washington Nationals.
Against the Phillies in the NLCS, Kershaw pitched a perfect seventh inning. Pedro Feliz flied to right, Jimmy Rollins struck out swinging and Shane Victorino popped out to shortstop.
In the eighth, he retired Chase Utley on a flyball to deep center. Ryan Howard flied to left. Kershaw walked Eric Brunlett and was replaced by Wade.
Rollins, Victorino and Utley would go on to become Dodger teammates of Kershaw down the road.
On the telecast, McCarver noted that Hall of Fame left-hander Sandy Koufax was in the ballpark and “number 32 watching number 22” probably conjured memories of Koufax’s early days in the mid-1950s with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
When Buck gushed about Kershaw’s “electric stuff,” McCarver replied, “He’s got some future …”
Koufax, sitting in the front row behind the Dodger dugout, would become a behind-the-scenes mentor to Kershaw, who faced the inevitable comparisons to the hard-throwing left-hander. Koufax, a 19-year-old rookie in 1955, had no Minor League experience because of a signing-bonus rule at the time that required his presence on the Dodgers’ Major League roster for at least two years.
Koufax became the dominant pitcher of his generation when he posted a 111–34 record between 1962 and 1966. He retired after a 27-win regular season at age 30 due to health concerns. Koufax had battled bouts with arthritis in his pitching elbow.
Kershaw was one of the speakers at Dodger Stadium in 2022 when a statue of Koufax was unveiled in Centerfield Plaza at Dodger Stadium to stand alongside a statue honoring Koufax’s former Brooklyn teammate, Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson.
As the Dodgers made a pitching change, subbing Kershaw for the right-handed Wade to face the Phillies’ Jayson Werth, McCarver — who caught Hall of Fame pitchers Bob Gibson and Steve Carlton during his four-decade playing career from 1959 to 1980, made a subtle prediction as Torre walked toward Kershaw:
“You have to think Clayton Kershaw has the mentality and the stuff — perhaps — to win a Cy Young Award someday.”
2025 NLDS: Kershaw’s 2008 Philly postseason debut was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.