NEW YORK • Clayton Kershaw might be the only one not comparing him with Sandy Koufax, both of them lefthanded aces for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Now both are Cy Young Award winners.
"I'm still uncomfortable with it," Kershaw said Thursday after winning his first NL Cy Young — in a runway. "I don't want to have any disrespect for Mr. Koufax. He did it for a long time. He won a lot of awards and he won World Series. He threw no-hitters. Just a lot of things I'm not anywhere close to accomplishing yet. I have tremendous respect for him and would never want to ever put myself in the same category as him."
Kershaw received 27 of 32 first-place votes and 207 points in voting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
Philadelphia's Roy Halladay, last year's winner, was second— with four first-place votes and 133 points. Phillies teammate Cliff Lee was third (90 points), followed by Arizona's Ian Kennedy (76 points).
Koufax, among the greatest lefthanders in baseball history, won three Cy Youngs for the Dodgers in 1963, 1965 and 1966.
"Whenever you have a Cy Young next to your name, there's going to be expectations that go along with it," Kershaw said.
With a big curveball that might be the best in baseball, Kershaw, 23, won the NL's pitching triple crown. Pitching on a team that went 82-79, he led the league with a 2.28 ERA and 248 strikeouts and with a 21-5 record tied Kennedy for most wins.
Kershaw, whose previous high for victories was 13 in 2010, dominated the league during the final two months of the season, going 8-0 with a 0.96 ERA in his final nine starts.
It was the 10th Cy Young won by the Dodgers, following Don Newcombe (1956), Don Drysdale (1962), Koufax, Mike Marshall (1974), Fernando Valenzuela (1981), Orel Hershiser (1988) and Eric Gagne (2003).
