Dodgers notes: Clayton Kershaw playing football, Will Smith framing, Mario Lopez

With quarterback Matthew Stafford now in Los Angeles with the Rams, we’re sure to get more tales of his childhood sports exploits with friend Clayton Kershaw in Texas.

Gary Klein at the Los Angeles Times wrote about Kershaw’s football-playing days, including this wonderful anecdote of high school:

Shortly after Kershaw’s only high school football season, Dailey said he was standing in the hallway when the left-hander approached him and said he was thinking about leaving the trenches behind to focus on baseball.

“And being a Texas high school football coach, where football is king,” Dailey recalled, laughing heartily, “I said, ‘Clayton, if you do that, that will be the worst decision you ever make in your life.’”

Turned out decently for Kershaw, it seems.

Links

• Here’s Bill Plunkett’s perspective on Kenley Jansen entering the final year of his contract, at the Orange County Register.
• Will Smith’s framing numbers took a dive in the truncated 2020 season. Max Bay at Dodgers Digest dug into why.
• Among the many baseball topics tackled by Jeff Passan at ESPN in his latest column, he liked the Dodgers getting 3.5/1 odds to repeat as World Series champions: “Baseball is weird, the playoffs are a small sample, blah blah blah. If it’s Dodgers vs. the field, I may still take the Dodgers.”
• Mario Lopez, noted Colonel Sanders portrayer and Dodgers fan, opened a restaurant in Houston, where Astros fans were not happy about it, writes Brittanie Shey at Eater Houston.
• Dan Szymborski at FanGraphs looked at the declining price per win above replacement paid in free agency the last few offseasons.