Dodgers: The links between Jackie Robinson and Clayton Kershaw

There have been plenty of great players who have suited up for the Dodgers in their illustrious history spanning both the years in Brooklyn and Los Angeles. There are also some interesting connections that bring not only those two cities together, but also different generations of players together as well.

For this exercise, we went to the Oracle of Baseball within Baseball-Reference.com, an exercise that connects baseball players in the same way that “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” finds converging timelines between Hollywood stars. So, in this article, we will look at MLB and Negro League players that overlap to form a chain between two of the most iconic names in Los Angeles Dodgers history.

What MLB players connect Dodgers legends Jackie Robinson and Clayton Kershaw?

Let’s start our exercise in the 1945 season for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues, where Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige were on the same roster for a team that finished second in the Negro American League with a 43-32-3 record.

Interestingly, while Paige and Robinson were star names on the team, it was Booker McDaniel who would lead the Monarchs that season in bWAR at 3.7, thanks in part to pitching stats that included 13 complete games in 14 starts (25 games) as well as five saves.

Of course, both Robinson and Paige would Major League Baseball as well, and it’s with an MLB team that our chain continues.

How Minnie Minoso helps connect Dodgers legends Jackie Robinson and Clayton Kershaw

In 1949, the Cleveland Indians had a roster filled with future Hall of Famers. In fact, eight future members of Cooperstown would play a role for the Indians that year (Lou Boudreau, Larry Doby, Bob Feller, Joe Gordon, Bob Lemon, Early Wynn, Satchel Paige, and Minnie Minoso). After winning the World Series the season before, however, the Indians finished in third place in the American League in 1949. Despite the talent on the roster, Cleveland finished eight games behind the New York Yankees.

The 1949 season was the first MLB season for Minoso, who was recently inducted into Cooperstown by the Golden Days Era Committee. He would play in just 17 games over two seasons for Cleveland before finding a home with the Chicago White Sox, a franchise he would have at least two at-bats for in four different decades.

Minoso’s long MLB tenure spread out over multiple decades make him the ultimate MLB player connector. It’s a mind-bender to think that he played with both Satchel Paige and Rich “Goose” Gossage, but he did, sitting next to Paige with the 1949 Indians and Gossage with the 1976 White Sox.

That year would mark Gossage’s second consecutive All-Star berth and a rarity in his career. The man with 310 career saves would start a career-high 29 games that season and log 15 complete games, posting a 3.94 ERA.

His steadiness as a starter in 1976 was bookended by seasons where he posted 26 saves in 1975 (with the White Sox) and 1977 (with the Pittsburgh Pirates).