Inside the nuances of Jantelagen, the Swedish mantra of putting team before self
What’s your favorite thing about Rasmus Dahlin?
This is the question members of the Buffalo Sabres are being asked by their social media team after practice has ended.
They say Dahlin is really funny. They say Dahlin has great hair. They say Dahlin is extremely talented in a variety of ways. One teammate’s answer was that Dahlin is Swedish. Another went as far as to say Dahlin has always had his back. It eventually led to a few coaches and players wondering whether the 22-year-old star defenseman was asked what he liked about himself.
“Are you asking everyone this question?” Dahlin said. “Oh my God. No.”
Dahlin then walked back to the dressing room, which left everyone around him laughing. What he did in that moment was more than a polite way to get out of answering the question. The fact that Dahlin asked about the group first while placing himself second, then chose not to talk about himself, is rather significant in its own right.
Back home in Sweden, it’s referred to as Jantelagen.
What is Jantelagen exactly? Essentially, it’s putting the success of the group before the accomplishments of the individual, and it has been part of the traditional cultural belief system in Sweden for hundreds of years.
Sounds perfect, particularly in hockey, where one of the game’s staples is having a team-first mentality, right?
Not necessarily. Jantelagen can be more complicated than that.
“We don’t like to brag, we don’t like to put ourselves before the group. That’s how Sweden works, I guess,” Dahlin said. “But there’s also a good part about being yourself and not being scared to be yourself. It’s a huge question.”
“It’s probably more of a problem than it is a blessing, to be honest with you,” Nashville Predators winger Filip Forsberg said.
THE ORIGIN STORY of Jantelagen and its roots are nuanced.
Benjamin Bigelow, who is an assistant professor of Scandinavian studies at the University of Minnesota, said Jantelagen isn’t uniquely Swedish. Bigelow said the concept also exists within Danish and Norwegian cultures because of the overlapping history shared among the three nations. It also exists in Finland and Iceland.
It’s part of what can make pinpointing an exact origin story so challenging.
Kristian Næsby, a former Scandinavian studies professor at the University of Washington, said the concept originated in Denmark following the Napoleonic Wars. Næsby said the events of the war forced Denmark to realize it was no longer a power and “what was lost on the outside must be gained on the inside.”
“The co-ops and unions started growing at this time,” Næsby said. “The dedication to a really strong education for everyone started at this time. So did the first steps toward a welfare system because we cannot afford to leave anyone behind.”
Bigelow said the studies into Jantelagen’s impact into traditional Swedish society revealed what was a historically weak nobility. That led to farmers and peasants aligning themselves with the monarchy as a way of guaranteeing a level of autonomy and security.
From there, it eventually paved the way for Scandinavian nations to have social benefits such as paid parental leave and universal, highly subsidized health care.
As for the name itself? It originated in the 1933 satirical novel “A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks” by Danish-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose, which provided a name for a shared Nordic experience in the fictional town of Jante. This is why there is some variation of the name in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden that essentially translates to the “Law of Jante.”
“Since Sandemose coined it, it’s been this handy way of describing this social reality that already existed,” Bigelow said. “It goes back to this long tradition of idealized Nordic farmers or peasants enjoying a fair amount of autonomy and political clout in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. But that’s also sort of painting it with a broad brush.”
“Not that it is necessarily explicit to one area, and it is talked about with how people come up in sports with the importance of being a good teammate,” said Næsby, who is Danish. “But the idea of equality and sameness is celebrated [in Nordic nations]. There are really strong ideas of community and ideas of trust and how everybody must contribute for a society or a sports team to be a success. Everyone must stay together.”
Predators defenseman Mattias Ekholm said being raised in Sweden meant he grew up learning that everyone is equal, and should have access to the same opportunities and social programs. He also said growing up in Sweden meant there was an importance placed on kindness and being helpful to one another, as if the nation were one big team.
Or as Seattle Kraken winger Andre Burakovsky more bluntly put it: It’s knowing everyone is the same and that nobody is bigger than anyone else.
“It just comes natural. It comes from your parents, and probably a lot of Swedes take it for granted a little bit because you don’t think about it,” Kraken forward Alex Wennberg said while sitting next to Burakovsky. “But when you bring it up? You’re like, ‘Oh yeah, maybe that is different.’ I think with Swedish people, it’s the way we are. We’re a smaller country than the United States and we have a different approach to it.”
It’s an approach that easily aligns with an NHL team environment.
“I think we are all based on that team-first mentality, which translates pretty well once you get over here,” Forsberg said.
Minnesota Wild goaltending prospect Jesper Wallstedt was speaking to ESPN for a story about goalie tandems. Wallstedt, a first-round pick by the Wild in 2021, explained how he believed in doing what is best for the team even if that meant being on the bench.
Wallstedt said he has a two-pronged approach for why he is open to being on the bench if that’s what is required. The first is he wants to win. The second stems from Jantelagen and the experiences he had when he was younger.
Since turning pro as a teenager, he has typically been the youngest player on every team he’s been on by at least three or four years. Wallstedt said being that young meant showing humility and respect for those older teammates with the hope others do the same.
“Everyone in Sweden is so humble and the most important thing my dad taught me was to be humble around everyone,” Wallstedt said. “He told me, ‘Don’t be a selfish little s—. Don’t think only about yourself.'”
ASKING SWEDES AROUND the NHL about Jantelagen draws a variety of reactions. Not that talking about Jantelagen is anything controversial. New York Rangers center Mika Zibanejad said that discussing Jantelagen is challenging because it can be hard to explain.
Dahlin asked a reporter what they knew about Jantelagen before fully delving into the subject, acknowledging the positives before digging a little deeper.
“But also Jantelagen takes away the good part about an individual,” Dahlin said. “In every group, there are successful individuals, too. It’s both ways. It’s a great thing to have in a group and everybody is equal and on the same page. That’s where I come from, but I also don’t want to be a part of it because it is both good and bad.”
Forsberg expressed similar sentiments.
“I think that’s something that goes both ways,” he said. “I do agree with some of the standards, but sometimes it gets a little too [much] even for my point of view.”
Constantly making the group the central focus also leads to some philosophical questions that could arguably be the most difficult aspect of Jantelagen.
How does one go about finding individuality, expressing individuality and becoming comfortable with their individuality? Is there a way to feel pride about one’s success without it coming across as arrogant?
The short answer: It’s extremely complicated for reasons that have everything and nothing to do with hockey.
“If you are good at something you are doing or if you have success, there are definitely different ways of expressing that,” Zibanejad said. “I don’t think you should feel ashamed or say sorry for something good that you’ve done. As much as it’s about the group, it’s about every individual reaching their highest potential. But at the same time … I don’t think anyone’s bigger than the team or the organization or the group that you are in. You can be a big part of that, but not bigger than everyone else.”
Being comfortable with one’s individual success while also practicing the parts of Jantelagen that provide a critical sense of structure is a challenge several players cited.
Forsberg offered a number of examples of what makes it so complex. He grew up playing youth hockey and handled losses differently than his teammates. Forsberg said his team could lose and his teammates were just happy they played a game. Asked how he reacted to a loss, Forsberg laughed and said he was “likely pissed and furious,” which could be seen as being in conflict with placing the group before the individual.
But the way Forsberg sees it, the drive he had as a child is what eventually helped him become a first-round draft pick and a three-time 30-goal scorer in the NHL. It’s also the reason, he said, his parents had to both scold and then console him after losses when he was a child.
“I don’t think anybody’s necessarily striving to be average, and I think that’s a little bit of the problem,” Forsberg said. “You’re allowed to be good. I think that’s the biggest part of it. You have to be allowed to compete, be allowed to try to achieve excellence and sometimes, the Swedish way is a little bit, ‘good is good enough,’ and I don’t necessarily agree with that.”
Forsberg referenced an ongoing discussion around Swedish youth hockey. In 2016, the Swedish Ice Hockey Federation introduced new rules in which there are no standings kept for children under 13. The Athletic, in a story about the nation’s development model, reported scores are kept during games but there are no written records of wins and losses. There are also no individual statistics kept for the regular season or tournaments at the U-13 level.
Anders Larsson, the federation president, told the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter at that time, “Children should be children, not young adults.”
“I think there is a fine line,” Forsberg said. “There’s definitely issues with being too young too, when you have U-8 elite hockey teams throughout the country like in the U.S. or Canada. You don’t want either. But I think competitiveness can never be left out of the game, whether it is young kids or older kids. I think that is still a big part of it.”
PETER WALLEN IS an NHL agent from Sweden who represents several Swedish players, including Colorado Avalanche winger Gabriel Landeskog and Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman.
He agreed with Forsberg’s assessment about why it is important to keep the competitive nature within youth sports. Wallen’s belief is that no nation has a better development model than Sweden, and it’s something that should be celebrated.
Nearly 11% of the players in the NHL are Swedish, which ranks third behind Canada (42%) and the U.S. (27.5%), according to QuantHockey.
“The kids know who scored, who won the game. Why hide it?” Wallen asked. “Why? Is that something bad and ugly we need to hide?”
Wallen also spoke to the complications that come with wanting to be proud of individual success within the scope of Jantelagen. He said in the U.S., there is a feeling of acceptance to talk about your success and how you made it happen. Wallen said in Sweden, it’s OK to have success, but there are certain aspects individuals should keep to themselves.
But how does that work in a business like Wallen’s, where agents have to sell their clients to teams or sell themselves to prospective clients? When it comes to speaking to teams, Wallen said he tries to show executives that his players can meet a demand.
“I never blow smoke up their a–es,” Wallen said. “I always have a backup for what I am saying. I also have the same backup when I am marketing my clients to the GMs because I think that is what the business is. Most of my clients don’t get too high on life from what I am seeing. We have conversations about that.”
How does that work for the players themselves? Yes, they play in a sport in which placing the group first is welcomed. But their individual performances matter, especially in key situations, when everyone is watching.
Is that why New Jersey Devils winger Jesper Bratt will celebrate his assists, but his goal celebrations are more subdued? Bratt said he enjoys setting up his teammates and it makes him excited to see other people find happiness in something he does.
“It’s a blast scoring goals and I love scoring goals, but maybe that side of me [Jantelagen] comes out a little bit on goal celebrations,” Bratt said. “I’ve had a lot of guys say that I should celebrate my goals a little bit more. Maybe I’ll put on a show next time.”
Bratt said he feels Jantelagen is something that applies more to his personal life rather than his life as a hockey player. He said living in North America has allowed him to feel more comfortable about the balance between being a team player and caring a little more about his individual contributions.
Ekholm said it is possible to have that balance of remaining humble, but also understanding that everyone who makes it to the NHL has to have “a little bit of an ego.”
“It’s really hard. I don’t think we teach people to be in that Jantelagen mentality but still have an ego,” Ekholm said. “But the people who make it to that level do have to have that ego. Whether they are born with it or not, it’s hard to say.”
Bigelow presented another item to consider: Is it possible Jantelagen is waning in a changing Sweden?
A number of players who spoke to ESPN outlined the challenges with Jantelagen, which further underscores the complexities.
Sweden is becoming more diverse, which has led to a rise in more diverse beliefs, Bigelow said.
Other factors beyond the demographics also are changing, most notably the global media landscape in which platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and YouTube are hyperfocused on the individual.
Is it possible all those factors could lead to some sort of shift in terms of Jantelagen?
“Does Jantelagen still describe modern Scandinavian society? Less and less so,” Bigelow said. “But if you are comparing it to America? Yes. Maybe it’s the pressure to conform or if you take the average Swede, average Finn, average Norwegian and compare them to the average American, Jantelagen is a way of looking at this traditional belief.”
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Bradford Doolittle
The 3,000-strikeout club has grown by one, with Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers whiffing the Chicago White Sox‘s Vinny Capra in the sixth inning Wednesday at Dodger Stadium, becoming the 20th pitcher in baseball history to reach that milestone.
The 3K pitching club doesn’t generate as much hullabaloo as its hitting counterpart, but it is more exclusive: Thirty-three players have reached 3,000 hits.
When you look at the list of pitchers with 3,000 strikeouts, and Kershaw’s place on it, a few things jump out.
• None of them pitched at Ebbets Field, at least not in a regular-season game. I frame it like that to illustrate that this level of whiffery is a fairly recent phenomenon. The Dodgers bolted Brooklyn after the 1957 season, and at that point, Walter Johnson was the only member of the 3,000-strikeout club. A career Washington Senator, he never pitched against the Dodgers. Every other 3K member made his big league debut in 1959 or later. Half of them debuted in 1984 or later. Three of them (Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander) are active.
• For now, Kershaw has thrown the fewest career innings of any 3K member, though he’s likely to eventually end up with more frames than Pedro Martinez.
• Kershaw has the highest winning percentage of the 20 (.697) and the best ERA+ (155), though his edges over Martinez (.685 and 154) are razor thin.
• Kershaw tops the list in average game score (61.9) and is tied for second (with Bob Gibson) for quality start percentage (68%), behind only Tom Seaver (70%).
• Kershaw lags behind in bWAR, at least among this group of current, future and should-be Hall of Famers with 77.1, ranking 16th.
So where does Kershaw really rank in the 3K club? I’m glad you asked.
First, what should be obvious from the above bullet points is that the response to the question will vary according to how you choose to answer it. The ranking below reflects not only how I chose to answer the question but how I’d like to see starting pitchers rated in general — even today, in the wildly different context from the days of Walter Johnson.
1. Roger Clemens
FWP: 568.8 | Strikeouts: 4,672 (3rd in MLB history)
Game score W-L: 477-230 (.675)
The top three pitchers on the list, including Rocket, match the modern-era top three for all pitchers, not just the 3K guys. (The string is broken by fourth-place Christy Mathewson.) Before running the numbers, I figured Walter Johnson, with his modern-era record of 417 career wins (the old-fashioned variety), would top the list. But Clemens actually started more games (relief appearances don’t factor in) and had a better game score win percentage.
2. Randy Johnson
FWP: 532.9 | Strikeouts: 4,875 (2nd)
Game score W-L: 421-182 (.698)
Since we’re lopping off pre-1901 performances, the method does Cy Young dirty. Only two pitchers — Young (511 wins) and Walter Johnson got to 400 career wins by the traditional method. By the game score method, the club grows to nine, including a bunch of players many of us actually got to see play. The Big Unit is one of the new 400-game winners, and of the nine, his game score winning percentage is the highest. The only thing keeping Johnson from No. 1 on this list is that he logged 104 fewer career starts than Clemens.
3. Walter Johnson
FWP: 494.7 | Strikeouts: 3,509 (9th)
Game score W-L: 437-229 (.656)
Don’t weep for the Big Train — even this revamping of his century-old performance record and the fixation on strikeouts can’t dim his greatness. That fact we mentioned in the introduction — that every 3K member except Walter Johnson debuted in 1959 or later — tells you a lot about just how much he was a man out of his time. Johnson retired after the 1927 season and surpassed 3,000 strikeouts by whiffing Cleveland’s Stan Coveleski on July 22, 1923. It was nearly 51 years before Gibson became 3K member No. 2 on July 17, 1974.
4. Greg Maddux
FWP: 443.3 | Strikeouts: 3,371 (12th)
Game score W-L: 453-287 (.612)
There is a stark contrast between pitcher No. 4 and pitcher No. 5 on this ranking. The wild thing about Maddux ranking above Nolan Ryan in a group selected for strikeouts is that no one thinks of Maddux as a strikeout pitcher. He never led a league in whiffs and topped 200 just once (204 in 1998). He was just an amazingly good pitcher for a really long time.
5. Nolan Ryan
FWP: 443.1 | Strikeouts: 5,714 (1st)
Game score W-L: 467-306 (.604)
Ryan is without a doubt the greatest strikeout pitcher who ever lived, and it’s really hard to imagine someone surpassing him. This is a guy who struck out his first six batters in 1966, when Lyndon Johnson was in the White House, and his last 46 in 1993, when Bill Clinton was there. Ryan was often criticized during his heyday for his win-loss record, but the game score method clears that right up. Ryan’s revised winning percentage (.604) is markedly higher than his actual percentage (.526).
6. Max Scherzer
FWP: 385.7 | Strikeouts: 3,419 (11th)
Game score W-L: 315-145 (.685)
Here’s another club Mad Max is in: .680 or better game score winning percentage, minimum 100 career starts. He’s one of just eight members, along with Kershaw. The list is topped by Smoky Joe Wood, who dominated the AL during the 1910s before hurting his arm and converting into a full-time outfielder. The full list: Wood, Martinez, Randy Johnson, Lefty Grove, Mathewson, Kershaw, Stephen Strasburg and Scherzer.
7. Justin Verlander
FWP: 385.0 | Strikeouts: 3,471 (10th)
Game score W-L: 349-190 (.647)
Like Scherzer, Verlander is fresh off the injured list. Thus, the two active leaders in our version of FWP have resumed their tight battle for permanent supremacy. Both also resume their quests to become the 10th and 11th pitchers to reach 3,500 strikeouts. Verlander, who hasn’t earned a traditional win in 13 starts, is 4-9 this season by the game score method.
8. Pedro Martinez
FWP: 383.5 | Strikeouts: 3,154 (15th)
Game score W-L: 292-117 (.714)
By so many measures, Martinez is one of the greatest of all time, even if his career volume didn’t reach the same levels as those of the others on the list. His 409 career starts are easily the fewest of the 3K club. But he has the highest game score winning percentage and, likewise, the highest score for FWP per start (.938).
9. Steve Carlton
FWP: 379.8 | Strikeouts: 4,136 (4th)
Game score W-L: 420-289 (.592)
When you think of Lefty, you think of his 1972 season, when he went 27-10 (traditional method) for a Phillies team that went 59-97. What does the game score method think of that season? It hates it. Kidding! No, Carlton, as you’d expect, dominated, going 32-9. So think of it like this: There were 32 times in 1972 that Carlton outpitched his starting counterpart despite the lethargic offense behind him.
10. Tom Seaver
FWP: 371.3 | Strikeouts: 3,640 (6th)
Game score W-L: 391-256 (.604)
Perhaps no other pitcher of his time demonstrated a more lethal combination of dominance and consistency than Seaver. The consistency is his historical differentiator. As mentioned, his career quality start percentage (70%) is tops among this group. Among all pitchers with at least 100 career starts, he ranks fifth. Dead ball era pitchers get a leg up in this stat, so the leader is the fairly anonymous Jeff Tesreau (72%), a standout for John McGraw’s New York Giants during the 1910s. The others ahead of Seaver are a fascinating bunch. One is Babe Ruth, and another is Ernie Shore, who in 1917 relieved Ruth when The Babe was ejected after walking a batter to start a game. Shore replaced him, picked off the batter who walked, then went on to retire all 26 batters he faced. The other ahead of Seaver: Jacob deGrom.
11. Clayton Kershaw
FWP: 370.9 | Strikeouts: 3,000 (20th)
Game score W-L: 301-137 (.687)
And here’s the guest of honor, our reason for doing this ranking exercise. As you can see, Kershaw joined the 300-game-score win club in his last start before Wednesday’s milestone game, becoming the 38th member. In so many measures of dominance, consistency and efficiency, Kershaw ranks as one of the very best pitchers of all time. When you think that he, Verlander and Scherzer are all in the waning years of Hall of Fame careers, you can’t help but wonder who, if anyone, is going to join some of the elite starting pitching statistical clubs in the future.
12. Don Sutton
FWP: 370.6 | Strikeouts: 3,574 (7th)
Game score W-L: 437-319 (.578)
For a post-dead ball pitcher, Sutton was a model of durability. He ranks third in career starts (756) and seventh in innings (5,283⅓). During the first 15 seasons of his career, Sutton started 31 or more games 14 times and threw at least 207 innings for the Dodgers in every season.
13. Ferguson Jenkins
FWP: 353.8 | Strikeouts: 3,192 (14th)
Game score W-L: 363-231 (.611)
Jenkins is in the Hall of Fame, so we can’t exactly say he was overlooked. Still, it does feel like he’s a bit underrated on the historical scale. His FWP score ranks 17th among all pitchers, and the game score method gives him a significant win-loss boost. That .611 percentage you see here is a good bit higher than his actual .557 career winning percentage. He just didn’t play for very many good teams and, in fact, never appeared in the postseason. He’s not the only Hall of Famer associated with the Chicago Cubs who suffered that fate.
14. Gaylord Perry
FWP: 335.6 | Strikeouts: 3,534 (8th)
Game score W-L: 398-292 (.577)
Perry, famous for doing, uh, whatever it takes to win a game, famously hung around past his expiration date to get to 300 wins, and he ended up with 314. Poor Perry: If my game score method had been in effect, he’d have quit two wins shy of 400. Would someone have given him a shot at getting there in 1984, when he was 45? One of history’s great what-if questions.
15. Phil Niekro
FWP: 332.5 | Strikeouts: 3,342 (13th)
Game score W-L: 408-308 (.570)
Knucksie won 318 games, and lost 274, the type of career exemplified by his 1979 season, when he went 21-20. We aren’t likely to see anyone again pair a 20-win season with a 20-loss season. His .537 traditional winning percentage improves with the game score method, but he’s still the low man in the 3K club in that column. Niekro joins Ryan and Sutton on the list of those with 300 game score losses. Sutton, at 319, is the leader. The others: Tommy John, Tom Glavine and Jamie Moyer. Of course, they were all safely over the 300-game-score win threshold as well.
16. CC Sabathia
FWP: 323.2 | Strikeouts: 3,093 (18th)
Game score W-L: 339-221 (.605)
Sabathia will be inducted into the Hall of Fame next month, and his place in this group only underscores how deserving he is of that honor. Sabathia debuted in 2001, and to reach the 250 traditional-win level (he won 251) in this era is an amazing feat. The only pitcher in that club who debuted later is Verlander, stuck at 262 wins after debuting in 2005. Right now, it’s hard to imagine who, if anyone, will be next. Of course, if we just went with game score wins, that would be different.
17. Bob Gibson
FWP: 321.0 | Strikeouts: 3,117 (16th)
Game score W-L: 305-177 (.633)
Gibson, incidentally, also won 251 games — and also gets enough boost from the game score method to climb over 300. His revised percentage is better than his traditional mark of .591. His average game score ranks third in this group, a reflection of his steady dominance but also of the era in which he pitched. Gibson is tied for eighth in quality start percentage among all pitchers. In 1968, when Gibson owned the baseball world with a 1.12 ERA, he went 22-9 by the traditional method. The game score method: 26-8. You’d think it would be even better, but it was, after all, the Year of the Pitcher.
18. Bert Blyleven
FWP: 320.2 | Strikeouts: 3,701 (5th)
Game score W-L: 391-294 (.571)
It took a prolonged campaign by statheads to raise awareness about Blyleven’s greatness and aid his eventual Cooperstown induction. He finished with 287 traditional wins, short of the historical benchmark. Here he would fall short of the 400-win benchmark, but, nevertheless, he is tied with John and Seaver for 11th on the game score wins list. His actual winning percentage was .534.
19. Curt Schilling
FWP: 307.1 | Strikeouts: 3,116 (17th)
Game score W-L: 281-155 (.644)
There are 31 pitchers who have broken the 300 FWP level, and it’s hard for me to imagine how anyone in that group could be left out of Cooperstown. You can sort this out for yourself in terms of baseball and not baseball reasons for this, but the group not there is Clemens, Schilling, John and Andy Pettitte, plus the greats (Kershaw, Verlander, Scherzer) who are still active.
20. John Smoltz
FWP: 273.8 | Strikeouts: 3,084 (19th)
Game score W-L: 290-191 (.603)
Smoltz won 213 games the traditional way, and he falls just short of 300 by the revised method. But all of this is about starting pitching, and with Smoltz, that overlooks a lot. After missing the 2000 season because of injury, he returned as a reliever, and for four seasons he was one of the best, logging 154 saves during that time. He’s the only member of the 200-win, 100-save club.
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Alden Gonzalez
LOS ANGELES — Clayton Kershaw‘s 3,000th career strikeout was preceded by a scary, dispiriting moment, when Los Angeles Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy injured his left knee and had to be helped off the field Wednesday night.
Muncy is set to undergo an MRI on Thursday, but Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said initial tests have them feeling “optimistic” and that the “hope” is Muncy only sustained a sprain.
With one out in the sixth inning, Muncy jumped to catch a throw from Dodgers catcher Will Smith, then tagged out Chicago White Sox center fielder Michael A. Taylor on an attempted steal and immediately clutched his left knee, prompting a visit from Roberts and head trainer Thomas Albert.
Muncy wrapped his left arm around Albert and walked toward the third-base dugout, replaced by Enrique Hernandez. His injury, caused by Taylor’s helmet slamming into the side of his left knee on a headfirst slide, was so gruesome that the team’s broadcast opted not to show a replay.
Taylor also exited the game with what initially was diagnosed as a left trap contusion.
The Dodgers went on to win 5-4 on Freddie Freeman‘s walk-off single that scored Shohei Ohtani.
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Alden Gonzalez
LOS ANGELES — His start prolonged, the whiffs remained elusive, and the Dodger Stadium crowd became increasingly concerned that Clayton Kershaw might not reach a hallowed milestone in front of them Wednesday. Finally, with two outs in the sixth inning, on his 100th pitch of the night, it happened — an outside-corner slider to freeze Chicago White Sox third baseman Vinny Capra and make Kershaw the 20th member of the 3,000-strikeout club.
Kershaw came off the mound and waved his cap to a sold-out crowd that had risen in appreciation. His teammates then greeted him on the field, dispersing hugs before a tribute video played on the scoreboard, after which Kershaw spilled out of the dugout to greet the fans once more.
Kershaw, the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ longtime ace, is just the fourth lefty to reach 3,000 strikeouts, joining Randy Johnson, Steve Carlton and CC Sabathia. He is one of just five pitchers to accumulate that many with one team, along with Walter Johnson, Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton and John Smoltz. The only other active pitchers who reached 3,000 strikeouts are the two who have often been lumped with Kershaw among the greatest pitchers of this era: Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer, the latter of whom reached the milestone as a member of the Dodgers in September 2021.
Kershaw’s first strikeout accounted for the first out of the third inning — immediately after Austin Slater’s two-run homer gave the White Sox a 3-2 lead. Former Dodger Miguel Vargas fell behind in the count 0-2, becoming the ninth batter to get to two strikes against Kershaw, then swung through a curveball low and away. The next strikeout, No. 2,999 of his career, came on his season-high-tying 92nd pitch of the night, a curveball that landed well in front of home plate and induced a swing-and-miss from Lenyn Sosa to end the fifth inning.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts did not even look at Kershaw as he made his way back into the dugout, a clear sign that Kershaw would not be taken out. The crowd erupted as Kershaw took the mound for the start of the sixth inning. Mike Tauchman grounded out and Michael A. Taylor hit a double, then was caught stealing on a play that prompted Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy to come down hard on his left knee, forcing him to be helped off the field.
The mood suddenly turned somber at Dodger Stadium. Then, four pitches later, came elation.
Kershaw reached 3,000 strikeouts in 2,787⅓ innings, making him the fourth-fastest player to reach the mark, according to research from the Elias Sports Bureau. The only ones who got there with fewer innings were Johnson (2,470⅔), Scherzer (2,516) and Pedro Martinez (2,647⅔).
The Dodgers came back to win 5-4, capping their rally with three runs in the bottom of the ninth.
Before the game, Roberts called the 3,000-strikeout milestone “the last box” of a Hall of Fame career — one whose spot in Cooperstown had already been cemented by three Cy Young Awards, 10 All-Star Games, an MVP, five ERA titles and more than 200 wins.
Kershaw’s 2.51 ERA is the lowest in the Live Ball era (since 1920) among those with at least 1,500 innings, even though Kershaw has nearly doubled that. He was a force early, averaging 200 innings and 218 strikeouts per season from 2010 to 2019. And he was a wonder late, finding ways to continually keep opposing lineups in check with his body aching and his fastball down into the high 80s.
Kershaw went on the injured list at least once every year from 2016 to 2024. A foot injury made him a spectator last October, when the Dodgers claimed their second championship in five years. The following month, Kershaw underwent surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee and a ruptured plantar plate in his left big toe, then re-signed with the Dodgers and joined the rotation in mid-May. He allowed five runs in four innings in his debut but went 4-0 with a 2.08 ERA in his next seven starts, stabilizing a shorthanded rotation that remains without Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Roki Sasaki and Tony Gonsolin.
Since the start of 2021, Kershaw has somehow managed to put up the sixth-lowest ERA among those with at least 400 innings.
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