SURPRISE, Ariz. On a winter morning this offseason, in an affluent neighborhood of Dallas, Clayton Kershaw stood on a high school baseball field and sought an explanation for the baseball riddle standing before him.
Kershaw was curious and intrigued, and well, who wouldn’t be? For the last two years, as Kershaw cemented his status as the best pitcher in the world, a modern-day Koufax in Los Angeles, he had tracked the career of Chris Young, a 6-foot-10 right-hander who had once starred at Highland Park High School, his alma mater.
He had watched Young confound major-league hitters using the simplest of formulas — an 86-mph fastball and an 80-mph slider — and he had witnessed him win a World Series championship with the Royals last October, and as a student of the craft, he watched it all with a certain degree of wonder.