The Santa Ana winds barreled through our valley the morning after the Dodgers won the World Series, the kind of wind that makes the whole house whistle and hum, makes the windows rumble and the screens rattle, the kind of wind that has you peeking through the curtains in the dawn light muttering, “What on fucking earth?”

My green ashes were <quote-01>bent nearly sideways in the unrelenting gusts<quote-01>, branches and leaves and paper trash somersaulting through the air and along the pavement. A genuine plastic kiddie pool rolled along the middle of the street like a hula hoop before spinning flush and taking flight from the picture frame of our bedroom window.

“You lose a kiddie pool?!” our unfriendly neighbors hollered the next day.

“Nope!” I shouted.

It wasn’t windy like this once last year, when the ashes were new. A good thing too because they wouldn’t have stood a chance, even just a couple months ago. All of them are twice staked now, their trunks like baseball bats just before the barrel. I watched them bend and jerk long enough to know they’d be fine.

Still, it took me a few extra minutes to fall back asleep, worrying about them each time a new gale shook the house. I was reminded again why Buffington is now denuded of its once stately trees—nothing to break the westerly wind where the street bends south into Third Avenue, <quote-02>not even the Weeks Roses warehouse that once loomed behind the wash<quote-02>. As such, the Santa Anas funnel through unabated and—sometimes—ferociously, having by now taken with them all but one of the dozen or so American elms of my youth.

She’s withstood nearly sixty years of such winds—this lone survivor—and she weathered them again. Scores of even older pepper trees up and down Euclid weren’t so lucky this time around; the carnage remains in piles at the sides of our city-spanning avenue still days later.

Poor trees.

<quote-03>The first year Kristen and I were married<quote-03>—thirteen years ago now—we helped my mom plant a Gold Medallion in the patio off the kitchen. There had been a wonderfully shady Mimosa in the same spot my entire childhood, but it had died in the spring. We’d ordered the Gold Medallion not long after, having seen a mature one at a local nursery, a dark green umbrella of a tree dotted with bouquets of yellow poppies.

In October of that year, Kristen and I were awakened one night to the sounds of Conch cursing back and forth in the hallway, the hall light seeping around the edges of our bedroom door.

“Go and see,” Kristen groaned, easily annoyed in those days.

<quote-04>I’m sure I hadn’t been asleep long, not long enough to fight getting up<quote-04>. So I followed the sound of Conch’s bedroom door slamming and knocked.

“What’s the problem?” I hollered through the door.

She flung it open, breathless. “The wind knocked over the Gold Medallion,” she bleated.

“Uprooted it or broke it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said as if resigned to its fate. “The whole thing’s on its side.”

“Well, shouldn’t we check?” I asked.

So we went out there in the Santa Anas and wrestled it back upright together. She leveraged her body weight against the wind while I, first, packed the loosened soil around the roots and, second, began tethering the trunk to a trash can, which I then filled with boulders. Every so often a particularly brutal gust would send twigs and leaves raining down upon us, would stir up the dust and debris into our eyes and mouths. At one point the wind gusted in such a way that the Gold Medallion almost took flight once again, almost wrestled the tether from my hands and toppled Conch into the dirt.

“Mom!” I shouted through the din, bending backwards almost horizontally in my fight to counteract the wind. “Mom,” I shouted again. “Do not let up! <quote-05>Lean into that sonuvabitch!<quote-05>”

The gusts kept coming. “Mom!” I tried again. I saw her lift her face to the sky, her back to me and against the southwestern edge of the trunk. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to say something, trying to beg off.

“You okay?” I shouted.

“Blow, winds!” she bellowed—only I couldn’t hear her.

“What!?” I screamed.

“Blow, winds!” she boomed again, louder this time. “And crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!” <quote-06>She was reciting Lear, I realized, just to herself at first but now to me as well, to the gods<quote-06>. “Your cataracts and hurricanoes,” she continued, as if summoning the strength of the fictional Lear and every Lawrence Olivier or Anthony Hopkins who ever committed the old bastard to memory, all the way through “O! O! Tis foul!” This was maybe forty-five minutes into our struggle.

Two hours it took to steady the thing.

I never got a chance to write about our time with the Cisneroses this summer, not that there’s much to tell. <quote-07>We did, however, eat dinner most nights beneath the blooming canopy of that thirteen-year-old Gold Medallion. Andy commemorated these meals with a pencil sketch<quote-07>, a riff on Picasso’s Guernica, itself a topic of conversation one of these nights, perhaps over chicken piccata or pork roast and gravy.

As for that last remaining Elm—on the north side of Buffington and just east of our alley—I suppose it represents the best-case scenario for our green ashes, for what they might become if the Santa Anas spare them. That’s the plan anyway. One wind is behind them, at least; <quote-08>who knows how many to go?<quote-08>

Let’s say we set the over/under at thirty-two.

Speaking of plans, when the Dodgers dropped Game Two to the Rays last Wednesday, I began envisioning a scenario in which Clayton took the bump on Sunday with a chance to win the World Series. I vowed long ago to be at Cooperstown when Clayton is inducted to the hall of fame, to hear his speech in person and shed a tear for our lost youths, his and mine both. My greatest fear for this hypothetical scenario had always been that Clayton never outpaced his postseason demons, never reframed “the narrative.” But as the Dodgers steamrolled the Rays in Game One and fell just short in Game Two due only to experimental pitching decisions bordering on arrogance, I found a new fear developing: listening to Kershaw—golden sportscoated, temples graying—speak from behind the Cooperstown lectern about his first and only World Series championship, knowing full well that I had the time and resources to see him pitch the clinching game but didn’t make it happen. <quote-09>No regrets, right, Wuck?<quote-09>

So, in the minutes before Buehler threw his first pitch in Game Three, I floated the idea past Kristen. When she consented and the Dodgers went up by five in the fourth, I bought a <quote-10>one-way ticket<quote-10> to Arlington. And when Jansen shut the door in the ninth, I pulled the trigger on a pod of four seats comparable to my own at the Ravine. 

With another dominant win under our belts and Urias on the mound the next day, I’ll admit to feeling pretty damn excited, even despite the hoops Kristen would make me jump through upon my return. “An adventure,” I kept saying to myself, imagining the careful packing, the early morning drive to the airport and the shuttle from the long-term parking lot, my in-terminal and in-flight precautions—which masks and when, how much hand sanitizer, how many Clorox wipes, how I’d pee right before boarding and abstain from anything but chewing gum for the duration—the Uber to the Sheraton within walking distance of the stadium, meeting up with Pat and walking the concourse, the green of the grass for the first time in a year, watching Kersh long toss in the outfield, the comparative ease of experiencing a stressful game in person, singing “Root root root for the Dodgers!” the unbroken clapping of a ninth-inning lead, the pure elation, the presentation of the MVP trophy to Kersh, the happy lingering in the stadium afterwards, the early morning Whataburger, sleeping late in a hotel double, grabbing some barbecue before heading to the airport, springing for a first-class seat, a same-day covid test. I’d run it all through my mind only to run it back again, silently, careful never to let the baseball gods know of my hopes, careful to not actually start packing—not until the twenty-seventh out.

Twenty-six outs are what we got—twenty-six and two strikes even—before Jansen left the cutter down, before Taylor took his eye off the ball, before Smith swiped his empty mitt with unnecessary haste. I didn’t rewatch that final play until we’d won the whole thing. I couldn’t. I mean, the manner in which we’d lost was outrageous and devastating enough without what I had riding on the outcome. Kristen—whether just for me or for herself too—immediately teared up; she couldn’t believe her eyes. I, of course, was furious when Jansen allowed the hit but was stunned into something else when Arozarena fell atop home plate. <quote-11>I slumped back into my chair<quote-11>. Usually <quote-12>I’m quick to shut off the television after such a loss<quote-12>, but it took me a moment to gather myself even enough to find the remote. Thankfully, there was work to be done—wallowing made no pragmatic sense—and I was down the stairs and out the front door in another minute, canceling flights and relisting tickets on StubHub, keeping a miserable eye on The Dodger Thread for some loving company.

<quote-13>Let’s just say I lost some money<quote-13>. But just as I knew the Dodgers could blow a lead in the ninth inning of Game Four, I knew I might lose every cent I spent on plane and game tickets. Even in the moment, I had to be able to justify the purchases as offerings to the baseball gods, to be content if the price paid was for a championship with or without my physical presence. It’s only money, I told myself.

Anyway, the more pressing anxiety was now how the upcoming Kershaw start had been reframed in that final disastrous play. As confident as I was that Clayton would overwhelm the Rays if gifted a 3-1 series lead, I was just as concerned about how a series tied 2-2 might play into the dreaded “narrative.” I remembered the four and three-run leads Kersh took to the mound and squandered in Game Five of the 2017 World Series. I remembered fleeing downstairs to escape my family, to suffer and rage alone as is my penchant. I remembered the existential crisis and the further fanning of “narrative” flames. Like a nightmare I remembered it all. And—as cruel, fucking fate would seemingly have it—not even twenty-four hours later, in the bottom of the third inning, my nightmare flirted with reality: a Kiermaier swinging bunt, a bad route for Mookie in right, and a single into left in quick succession sent me downstairs once again, nearly apoplectic at the horror of it all. When Margot walked to lead off the next inning and then scurried his way to third on the backs of more Dodger errors, I figured Clayton’s night was nearing its end.

Admittedly, such moments in the regular season have separated Kersh from other great pitchers, elevated him to a position even above most legends; he simply refuses to let runners that should score cross the plate. For context, teams score runs in an inning like that bottom of the fourth over 70 percent of the time. Succumbing to “the narrative” myself, I was all but certain Margot would score to tie it. Hearing him talk after the game, even Kersh was certain Margot would score. But then—miraculously or inevitably, I’m still not sure—regular season Clayton Kershaw, for the first time I can remember, showed up in the postseason. Dominant Kersh has shown up plenty: 2013 NLDS Game One, 2015 NLDS Game Four, 2016 NLCS Game Two, 2017 World Series Game One, 2018 NLDS Game Two; twice in this very postseason had Clayton dominated the opposition with his pinpoint fastball and impossible slider. But that version of Kershaw who remarkably wiggles off the line in the direst of circumstances never seemed to arrive—until he did. Pop-up, strikeout, caught stealing. <quote-14>Easy peasy<quote-14>. Sure, the attempted steal of home got plenty of press; it was exciting as hell, I’ll admit. But there was nothing more perfunctory for Clayton: step off, throw it home, back to the dugout. Really. Go back and watch him walk off the mound that inning—barely a fist pump. That’s my guy: not just the dominator but the escape artist. I mean, I get why Dave pulled him two easy outs into the sixth, and I’m glad Dustin May re-established his own brand of dominance when he hit the mound, but Kersh certainly could’ve gone eight that night. Regular season Kershaw, after all, is routinely unhittable for innings at a time; and in that start, he ended “the narrative” that playoff Kershaw and regular season Kershaw were two separate entities.

Would I have liked to be there? Sure. But that wasn’t the deal I’d struck with my wife or, for that matter, the baseball gods. I knew that had I gone out there for Game 5, I’d have wanted to stay for Game 6. And if that hadn’t gone according to plan, I’d have wanted to stay for Game 7. In truth, I would have happily purchased and left unused more tickets if the gesture vouchsafed the end of both Clayton Kershaw’s postseason narrative and the Dodgers’ thirty-two-year championship drought.

How sweet would it have been to witness the boys in blue dogpile behind the mound at Dodger Stadium? Pretty sweet. How sweet was it to watch from the family room of my youth, the same in which I watched Gibby circle the bases thirty-two years prior? Sweet enough.

In my response to your description of Smith’s NLCS dinger, Hoke, I wondered aloud about the effect of a happy ending, how far backward its good vibrations might extend. I mentioned the forever-embrace of such moments made possible by a championship. Smith’s home run, now, will only ever summon positive feelings, stir up the never-ending euphoria of the moment and all that ensued. Puig’s Game Four home run from the 2018 World Series—for the sake of contrast—comes to mind as a memory of a similarly joyful moment rendered more bitter than sweet by what occurred in the next three innings.

“How far back?” I mused.

“Surely not to 2017,” you responded, Wuck.

But I’m not so sure.

Are you as speechlessly enraged about 2017 as you were a month ago? <quote-15>I know I’m not<quote-15>. This is not to say that I won’t in some part devote the remainder of my rooting existence to demoralizing members of that 2017 Astros team whenever I get the chance. I vow to you both and to myself that I will. Attention must be paid. But so much of the sadness is gone. To remain sad would be a real slap to the face of our present happiness. I think again, Wuck, about your Louis CK quote: “People who say they have no regrets sound conceited.” I get it. I can hear these words from smug lips, from the lips of the undeserving and the insufferable and the too fortunate. But I can also hear these words from the lips of the grateful. “If the universe saw fit for me to suffer so that I might end up here and appreciate it, well, so be it.”

When a couple of journalists after the game tried to broach his past failures, Kersh was quick to shut them down. “I don’t care about any of that,” he shot back. And later, “All those other years don’t matter; those years are done with.” Perhaps under different circumstances I wouldn’t have believed him. Maybe such claims would have felt like a competitor’s mantra helping to outpace the trauma of past inadequacy. But this interview felt different. “We won the World Series,” he kept saying, as if to remind himself. “The 2020 Dodgers won the World Series. Who cares about any of that other stuff?”

Maybe having regrets and projecting them into the universe are two different things. <quote-16>Maybe that’s what makes Clayton Clayton and Louis CK Louis CK<quote-16>.    

“<quote-17>I’m just so very thankful to be a part of this group of guys<quote-17>,” he said through a postgame grin we’re rarely treated to. “And so very thankful that we get to be on the team that is bringing back a World Series to the Dodger fans.” Again and again he used the word: thankful. “I’m not going to take it for granted.”

Whatever the reason, Clayton Kershaw finally caught a postseason break, finally won one. And, goddammit, he’ll take it.

Either way, he’ll be out there again next season. That probably, in the end, is the best and most lasting takeaway, the truest “narrative” of Clayton Kershaw.

Things, after all, don’t always go our way. Maybe we never win again. Maybe the winds claim every damn tree before its heyday. <quote-18>But, like, that can’t stop us from trying<quote-18>.