Kershaw arrives full circle in final season

Dodgers icon ending career in 'pen, just as ex-teammate Maddux did with L.A.

- BILL SHAIKIN COLUMNIST

AL TIELEMANS Sports Illustrated

IN HIS PLAYOFF debut in 2008, Clayton Kershaw came on in relief against the Phillies and retired his first five batters.

As Clayton Kershaw completed his pregame routine the other day and walked off the field at Citizens Bank Park, I asked him about his postseason debut.

That was 17 years and 39 playoff appearances ago, and yet Kershaw remembered it so well that he got his answer out before I got all of my question out.

"I was in the 'pen," Kershaw said. "Here."

The pitching staff of the 2008 Dodgers featured two Hall of Famers: Kershaw, in his first year, and Greg Maddux, in his last year.

When the Dodgers faced the Philadelphia Phillies in the National League Championship Series, Derek Lowe, Hiroki Kuroda and Chad Billingsley made the cut as starters. Kershaw and Maddux did not.

"He and I were both kind of the long guys down there," Kershaw said. "It's crazy, kind of the similarities.

"Where I am now is kind of where he was. It's pretty cool."

For just about every player, baseball tells you when your career is over. Maddux, for all his accolades, was no exception.

In each of his last five seasons, his earned-run average was above 4.00, even as he pitched at least 194 innings in each of them. In his last Dodgers-seven stint with the starts at the end of the 2008 season -his ERA was 5.09.

Maddux knew that postseason would be the end for him. He just didn't tell anyone.

In his last outing-in the game in which the Phillies eliminated the Dodgers six Dodgers relievers. He worked the fourth and fifth innings, left the mound with the Dodgers down by five runs, and quietly asked the plate umpire for a baseball on his way out.