A strong, stalwart gaze: Confidence and the Dodgers

Dave Roberts, moments before his first Spring Training game as Dodger manager (Ben Platt/MLB.com)

By Jon Weisman

Clayton Kershaw jogged to the mound, pounded his fist in his glove, grabbed the resin bag for a quick spin around his palm, scraped his left cleat in front of the rubber, and threw his first warmup pitch. Baseball was back.

The first day of Spring Training games goes hand in hand with optimism, lines up directly alongside confidence. So does Kershaw. The appearance of the great left-hander on a crisp baseball field is as reassuring and encouraging as the sun’s steady climb above the Arizona desert.

But the kind of confidence that christened Camelback Ranch today was not a blind, naive one. Not, after all, on a morning when we learned that starting pitcher Brett Anderson would be lost for half the baseball season, if not more.

It’s not that things won’t go wrong. It’s never that things won’t go wrong. It’s how something right, something very right, is always within reach. That’s confidence.

It’s a confidence rooted in resilience, illustrated even in the low stakes of a Cactus League opener. It’s in the assured ability of Kershaw to come back, after walking the second batter he faced, to strike out White Sox slugger Jose Abreu. It’s in Joe Blanton trying to take advantage of his second chance as a Dodger, fanning three in his two innings, including his own Abreu whiff. It’s in the six different RBI hits from a lineup that, on this day at least, wouldn’t quit.

It’s in Dave Roberts, gazing out with joy and determination in perfect harmony.

Losing a pitcher like Anderson is a blow, one not to be dismissed. Brandon McCarthy, Frankie Montas and Josh Ravin are already on the sidelines, Hyun-Jin Ryu’s return date isn’t locked in. Confidence says: We got this. We can take the blows, because we’re strong enough and deep enough and tough enough to fight back.

Maybe that’s a hard line to sell even in March, let alone during the season, when the games do matter. A hard line to sell across 27 seasons of disappointment, across a generation of cynicism. But no champion has ever won unscathed. And if you don’t believe you can change the past, why bother playing? If you don’t believe that a better day is possible, why bother watching?

Every day, I believe the sun will rise.