You know, it’s a funny thing about baseball. Sometimes, the very thing that defines a player isn’t there on Day One. When young Clayton Kershaw strode to the mound for the Los Angeles Dodgers on that warm May afternoon in 2008, all eyes were fixed on that golden left arm. He had the high heat, he had the snapdragon curve, and, as we later learned, a fierce competitive fire. But what he didn’t have that day was the pitch that would one day make him a baseball immortal—the slider.

Back then, his fastball sizzled at 95 miles an hour, and his curveball—oh, that big, sweeping curve—already had the makings of something special. His very first strikeout? Skip Schumaker, frozen by that letter-high heater. The crowd roared, and somewhere deep in the hearts of Dodger fans, they could sense the beginning of something. But Kershaw was still a work in progress, a young pitcher with electric stuff but the occasional wild streak, walking more than four batters per nine innings. Greatness? It was coming—but not just yet.

The story, though, is as old as the game itself. A player, armed with talent but humbled by failure, goes searching for answers. For Kershaw, that search took him to the bullpen at Wrigley Field in 2009. That’s where a quiet suggestion from bullpen catcher Mike Borzello turned into destiny. “Let’s try a slider,” they said. And wouldn’t you know it—the very first one was perfect. Like it had been there all along, just waiting to be discovered. That pitch, sharp and deceptive, quickly became his secret weapon…and soon, it wasn’t much of a secret.

From that day forward, the slider became the bridge between the overpowering fastball and that majestic curve. It wasn’t flashy at first—a baby curve, they called it. But by the mid-2010s, it had matured into the most feared slider in the big leagues, darting in on right-handers, diving away from lefties, and piling up strikeouts by the hundreds. The pitch evolved, much like Kershaw himself. Slower now, sure. His fastball no longer brushes the upper 90s, but that slider? It remains as devastating as ever, a testament to his precision and will.

And so, it was fitting that on a cool Los Angeles evening, beneath the glow of the Dodger Stadium lights, it was the slider that carried him to history once more. Strikeout number 3,000—a swinging miss by Vinny Capra of the White Sox—etched Kershaw’s name alongside the immortals. There’s Koufax. There’s Drysdale. And now, there’s Kershaw, still spinning that slider with the same quiet mastery that’s defined his career.

​​Funny, isn’t it? All those years ago, Russell Martin marveled at the fastball, the curve, the changeup. What he—and the baseball world—didn’t know was that the real story, the real legacy, would ride in on a pitch that wasn’t even part of the script that first day. But that’s baseball for you. The game reveals itself in time. And for Clayton Kershaw, it revealed a slider…and with it, a path to greatness.