he midst of a World Cup cycle – of one of the greatest footb

CHICAGO -- Clayton Kershaws playoff renaissance is over, at least for this year. The Los Angeles Dodgers ace flopped at a big moment -- again.Kershaws postseason resume took another hit in Game 6 of the NL Championship Series, finishing off the reeling Dodgers. The Chicago Cubs battered the three-time Cy Young Award winner on their way to a 5-0 victory Saturday night, making it 28 years and counting since the Dodgers last won the World Series.This day is never fun, the ending of a season, Kershaw said. You look back and think about the whole season as a whole. Its tough to swallow tonight, obviously, but Id rather be in this position and fail than not to get to be in this situation at all.Kershaw could have started Game 5 on three days rest, but manager Dave Roberts decided to save him for Saturday night at Wrigley Field. Roberts was hoping a couple more days would help Kershaw duplicate his performance from Game 2, when he pitched seven innings of two-hit ball in a 1-0 victory.The decision worked out quite well -- for the Cubs. After winning a pair of shutouts in Games 2 and 3, the Dodgers dropped the next two by a combined score of 18-6. Even the great Kershaw was unable to slow Chicagos momentum, and Roberts first season as Dodgers manager ended in disappointment.The left-hander allowed four earned runs and seven hits while dropping to 4-7 with a 4.55 ERA in 18 playoff games.I think that the first thing I saw is the Cubs hitters, they had a great game plan tonight, Roberts said. And there was a couple mistake sliders that they took advantage of. But they were running counts, they used the whole field, and there was traffic all night for Clayton. And he gave it everything he had, but when they did -- when he did make a mistake, they made him pay.Dexter Fowler hit a ground-rule double on Kershaws third pitch of the night, and the Cubs were off and running. Kris Bryant followed with an RBI single. Then left fielder Andrew Toles dropped Anthony Rizzos fly ball to the gap in left-center, setting up Ben Zobrists sacrifice fly.It was the first time Kershaw had given up two runs in the first inning all season. He was limited to 21 starts this year due to a back injury.You get out of that first inning and you give up two, you feel like you have a chance maybe, Kershaw said. They just kept tacking on runs. I gave up some two-out hits and some homers and some two-strike hits -- just a lot of things that you cant do in a game like this.Fowler added a two-out RBI single in the second, rookie Willson Contreras hit a leadoff drive in the fourth and Anthony Rizzo connected in the fifth. Rizzo became the first lefty batter to homer against Kershaw since Daniel Murphy for the New York Mets in Game 4 of their 2015 Division Series.It was the first time Kershaw had allowed two homers in a game since April 9 at San Francisco. That was it for Roberts, who hit for his star pitcher in the sixth.We have asked a lot of Clayton all year long, so, again, its just more of you got to give those hitters credit, Roberts said.While Kershaw struggled against the Cubs, the Dodgers were shut down by Kyle Hendricks and Aroldis Chapman. Los Angeles managed just two hits and four baserunners, with none of them advancing past first.Chicago became the first team to face the minimum in a postseason game since Don Larsens perfect game for the New York Yankees in the 1956 World Series.We had a 2-1 lead with two games at home and it didnt go the way we thought it would go, Los Angeles center fielder Joc Pederson said. We didnt take care of business. We made some mistakes, all of us.Roberts managed the Dodgers to their fourth straight NL West title after taking over for Don Mattingly. But injuries to Scott Kazmir, Brandon McCarthy, Brett Anderson and Hyun-Jin Ryu hurt rotation depth.Kenta Maeda, who won 16 games during his rookie season, struggled in the playoffs, and 20-year-old Julio Urias was knocked out in the fourth inning of his first postseason start in Game 4 on Wednesday night.Los Angeles went with three starters in the Division Series against Washington and Kershaw pitched three times, including a two-out save in the clinching Game 5. When he stepped up again in his first start in the NLCS, it looked as if he might be on the verge of a postseason breakthrough.But his turnaround came to a screeching halt on a cool night in the Windy City. He dropped to 1/3 with a 6.28 ERA in five career starts with the Dodgers facing postseason elimination, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.Its only going to make him stronger for the years coming on, Pederson said. Hes had some trouble with his back and overcame it and came and helped us win the division and get past the NLDS. We wouldnt be here without him. Hell be stronger for next year.---Jay Cohen can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jcohenap Wholesale Fake Yeezy Boost 350 V2 . 9. Price, heading to the 2014 Olympics for Canada, was named the First Star after posting wins in three starts with a 1.00 goals-against average and a .971 save percentage. Cheap Fake Yeezy Boost 350 V2 . -- Ryan Blaney provided more evidence that Penske Racings No. http://www.fakeyeezyboost350.com/ .5 million, one-year contract on Friday. Hawkins, who turns 41 in December, will compete with Rex Brothers for the closers role at spring training. Fake Yeezy Boost 350 Online . Kiriasis and brakeman Franziska Fritz finished two runs in one minute 55.41 seconds -- a mere 0.01 seconds ahead of Meyers and Lolo Jones, who likely bolstered her Olympic hopes by helping give USA-1 a huge push in the second heat. Fake Yeezy Boost 350 Store . The 43-year-old closer, in his 19th and final big league season, has said hed like to play the outfield. Yankees manager Joe Girardi says hes thinking about allowing Rivera to do it this weekend, when the Yankees finish their season with a three-game series at the Houston Astros.Whilst our governing bodies continually tinker with formats, a common perception which holds true right across the North American sporting landscape: All-Star Games are meaningless and are bereft of substance or relevancy. Time now for a serious rethink. What occurred at Sporting Park Wednesday night was so much more than a lopsided game. When MLS announced Sporting KC would host this seasons All Star Game in early January we didnt even know who the opponent would be. With what we know now it is not an exaggeration to state we are in the initial throes of a tipping point for Major League Soccer, one whose origins are traced back to January 2007. David Beckham was the game changer then and injected an accelerated pathway of unprecedented growth both on and off the pitch for a league which came into being as a requirement of FIFA awarding the 1994 World Cup Finals to the U.S. He may have left the MLS pitch but Beckhams legacy on the league can only be truly measured following the full passage of time. The 2013 All-Star Game may have come and gone but the events and news which started as soon as MLS entire stakeholder group began arriving in Kansas last Sunday and on through to well after they had all departed will ripple and flow through MLS forever more. It all got going Tuesday afternoon when one of the leagues charter franchises - the Columbus Crew - was sold for a record price. According to Forbes that figure now sits at $68 million. The original price paid for the Crew back in 1995 by one of MLS founding investors Lamar Hunt was a mere $5 million. Even if you throw in the approximate $30 million cost of constructing Crew Stadium, the original soccer-specific stadium built in the MLS era, that sale price represents a greater than six-fold Return on Investment. Not a shabby return no matter what metric you deploy or measure it against. No irony was lost in the fact that the news came with Kansas City as the backdrop, another of the charter franchises which was owned and operated by Lamar Hunt and the Hunt Sports Group. Though news of the sale may not have budged the mainstream needle, that collective shoulder shrug was surely replaced with wide-eyed amazement following the news which came during the interval of Wednesdays so-termed showpiece event. Ordinarily at the MLS Cup or the All-Star Game, Don Garbers halftime broadcast appearance is bereft of substance – a mere photo opportunity sans the baby kissing. Not anymore. Garbers main purpose during his appearance on ESPN Wednesday night - an appearance that was ultimately broadcast in well over 100 countries - was to advise a waiting world of Agenda Item Number One from that days Board of Governors meeting. Expansion. The needle moving type. One which will result in 24 teams taking to MLS pitches across North America for the start of the 2020 season. Major League Soccer on a scale not rationally believable when you consider just a short decade ago contraction was on everyones minds as both Florida-based franchises were sacrificed for the common long term good. Contraction bought the number of franchises at the time to just 10. The same number there was when MLS kicked off in 1996. The decision to contract was one the league had fretted anxiously over. It was not exactly the best message to be sending as at this exact time MLS was desperately short of hard cash, splashing about blindly in their search for broadcast and partnership deals. Whispers the league was on its last throes got louder after having already racked up over $250 million in debt and losses over these inttervening years.dddddddddddd That contraction now has a very legitimate chance of coming full circle. Flavio Augusto da Silva, the Brazilian owner of Orlando Soccer Club wants to bring Major League Soccer back to Florida. Orlando, who currently play in USL Pro, were invited to make a presentation during Wednesday mornings Board of Governors meeting. Adding fuel to the Florida fire is a widely held belief David Beckham will finally exercise his option to purchase an MLS franchise and will call Miami home. This was the destination Barcelona had in mind for the 2011 expansion. Ultimately that cycle resulted in the Whitecaps and Portland winning out. The Bolivian telecommunications billionaire Marcelo Claure who originally partnered with Barcelona and whose empire is headquartered in Miami is Beckhams dance partner. With the league fully aware of the immense values stemming from localized football rivalries and if we take their 2011 expansion business model into account, one can safely presume two of those four franchises will be located in the snowbird state. Considering the aggregate values returned to the league by the three Canadian clubs the migration and emigration of Canadians to Florida is likely not a point lost on the increasingly efficient league accountants based in Manhattan. Where, then, will the remaining two franchises be located? Well, forget speculating for now. Having already made a career legacy out of it - the master of flushing MLS prospects out of that very same woodwork goal posts and crossbars are made of - Don Garber must be grinning like a Cheshire Cat at the prospects line-up which will over time line up two-abreast outside his office door. They say bad news occurs in groups of three. Well this week for MLS the opposite has occurred. The third piece of good news stems from a random sighting, at a random US airport, by a random MLS Seattle supporter. The subject of that sighting, however, was anything but random. As the football world held its collective breath and obsessively fixated over a certain Tottenham Hotspur player unbeknown to all, it was another Spurs player quietly slipped away from training camp. Destination: Heathrow Airport. ESPN broke the news late Friday evening that Clint Dempsey - the U.S. captain still very much in the prime of his career - would be signing with the Sounders. Its not so much MLS Prodigal Son returning to a league he left back in 2007, but more a case - as we are now in the midst of a World Cup cycle – of one of the greatest footballers to emerge from the U.S. being convinced that MLS is on a football journey he very much wants to be part of after successfully exporting himself to one of world footballs best leagues. Seattle is reported to be paying Dempsey more than Beckhams base salary over a four-year term, with a total outlay running north of $40 million once the transfer fee has been factored in. This is MLS were talking about… a league where you could have purchased all 10 franchises for $50 million back in 1996. According to many, the Seattle Sounders unimaginable and unquantifiable success in large part is down to the fact the Emerald City is deemed the counter-culture capital of America. By 2020 MLS will be the counter-culture capital of world football. Over to you, FIFA. You can reach and follow Noel Butler at: Noel.Butler@BellMedia.ca @TheSoccerNoel Tune into TSN 690 Monday evening at 6:00pm et - when we will speak with ESPNs Doug McIntyre about Clint Dempseys return to Major League Soccer. Also available at TSN.ca/Montreal ' ' '