Clayton Kershaw understands an out-of-this-world performance. The Dodgers pitcher, just 27, already has four ERA titles, three Cy Young awards and a 2015 strikeout total that would make Randy "The Big Unit" Johnson blush — for reasons other than being nicknamed The Big Unit.
But he's only the second member of his own family to transcend the boundaries of earthen accomplishment.
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Over the past week, the scientific community and Pluto-apologists everywhere went nuts over the Pluto flyby, when a nine year, three billion mile odyssey of NASA's New Horizons spaceship reached its destination. Never before had we been so close to space's Joe Flacco (Elite or not elite? Planet or not a planet?). The first sneak-peek images were stunning.
It seems to have geologic regions. It’s not just a uniform ice ball - @BillNye on #Pluto: http://t.co/rmalW10Mb3 pic.twitter.com/ZpZJbtomKe
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) July 16, 2015It's an incredible moment of scientific discovery that started with the discovery of a small planet. And Kershaw knows the man who found it first. It's his great uncle — Clyde Tombaugh. Seriously.
Kershaw talked about the family connection on an episode of "Jimmy Kimmel Live" in 2013, when the wound of Pluto's new classification as a dwarf planet still stung, fresh. The folks at Yahoo! Sports' Big League Stew preserved the most marvelous quote of a Kershaw scorned by space experts:
"It's been a huge problem in the Kershaw-Tombaugh side of the family for years," Kershaw told Kimmel. "They took it away from us."
But now, perhaps, Kershaw can rest easy. Now, we can all see, up close, a planet his great uncle once saw from a great distance at Flagstaff, Arizona's Lowell Observatory. We can appreciate the beauty of Tombaugh's find.
And as this totally not-edited photo below illustrates, the connection between astronomer and pitcher, between great uncle and nephew, seems stronger than ever.
