The story you’re about to read begins with a $5.35 purchase on Amazon.
It’s a used copy of a 2011 book called Arise: Live Out Your Faith and Dreams on Whatever Field You Find Yourself, and it’s written by Clayton Kershaw, his wife, Ellen, and Ellen’s sister, Ann Higginbottom. It’s a breezy read, 200 pages on the dot. Autographed, too. As far as $5.35 purchases go, I’ve done far worse.
I bought this book back in November, once I knew I was going to be profiling the Kershaws. It’s always good journalistic practice to read someone’s book as research, no matter how dated, but in this case, it was essential. Clayton Kershaw doesn’t do a ton of press, which is a choice one can easily make upon becoming arguably the greatest pitcher in the last 50 years. He speaks even less frequently concerning topics beyond the baseball diamond. So if a book written by his 23-year-old self could shed any light on the man he is at 35, well, I was game to spend an afternoon of reading to find out.
And it did. You’ll see what I mean when you get into the story, but one passage from that book shaped the entire direction of my story after I sat down with the Kershaws in their University Park home. Turns out that Clayton and Ellen have something of a knack for envisioning where their lives are going and shaping their future accordingly. They’ll need it, too, because we’re now much closer to the end of Clayton’s baseball career than the start. What happens when it’s over?
That’s what we get into. If you’re a baseball fan, you’ll get more insight than you’ve seen before on where Clayton Kershaw’s final playing years might take him, including maybe, possibly, the Texas Rangers (yes, there’s a real chance of it happening).
If you aren’t, you’ll love reading about a Park Cities family that is made here, stayed here, and is working in the community here even after attaining superstardom in Los Angeles. The Kershaws always have been and always will be Dallasites. And now you can learn plenty about their world here—past, present, and future.
The story is the cover of our April issue and is online today.
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