Clayton Kershaw made his broadcasting debut for NBC on Thursday — seated next to the Dodgers’ third base dugout during their Opening Day win over the Diamondbacks — and won’t have another broadcast assignment until August.
That detail came from Kershaw himself on Friday, speaking ahead of the Dodgers’ ring ceremony, where the team also announced it was bringing him on as a special assistant. The role is fluid and won’t involve coaching, with Kershaw planning to watch games and contribute where he can from his home in Dallas.
“I’ll be involved somehow,” he told ESPN. “Probably not physically here in L.A., but definitely, I’m sure I’ll watch games. I still want to be a part of the Dodgers, so if I can help in some small piece, I will.”
When reports first emerged in November that Kershaw would step away from the game before exploring media opportunities, NBC was already quietly building a case for him. The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reported in January that Kershaw was a top target for select events as the network assembled its MLB roster for the first time since 2000, and Front Office Sports confirmed shortly after that a deal was nearing. He ultimately landed as part of NBC’s studio stable alongside Joey Votto and Anthony Rizzo, and as we covered earlier this week, NBC built a specific “Inside the Pitch” feature around his pitcher’s perspective for live at-bats, pulling analysis from Kershaw and Adam Ottavino to walk viewers through how a pitcher approaches specific hitters in real time.
Viewers got a taste of that Thursday night, and won’t hear from Kershaw on NBC again until August.
Kershaw went out about as well as anyone could, retiring after the 2025 season with his third World Series ring, having been warming up in the 11th inning of Game 7 when Mookie Betts ended it, then turning around and joining Team USA in the World Baseball Classic as an emergency reliever before being part of NBC’s coverage for Opening Day. He told ESPN he doesn’t feel like retirement has really started yet, and given everything that has happened since he threw his last pitch as a Dodger, that’s hard to argue with.
Perhaps it’ll finally sink in come his next scheduled appearance.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.