Clayton Kershaw's journey to launching the Kershaw Challenge

Hi, I'm Clayton Kershaw, and I'm a professional baseball player, and this is my wife, Ellen, and this is Days Off. We play 162 games in 180 days, so we really don't get a ton of off days, and a lot of those are travel days, so home off days are even more limited. We are here supporting our charity, Kershaw's Challenge, at our 10th annual Ping Pong for Purpose here at Dodger Stadium. Our hosts tonight, Max Greenfield, Cedric the Entertainer. We've got a big group of celebrities. It's just a fun night. But, you know, right now, this is an opportunity to give back for those who can do and give to others. Clayton reached out and asked me if I would host this year with Cedric, and it was the easiest yes I've had in a really long time. This is my second year. The first year, I learned nearly nothing about ping pong, but I learned quite a bit about Kershaw's Challenge and what a meaningful organization it is, and I'm so happy to be here supporting them supporting Clayton and Ellen and all the work that they're doing Clayton and Ellen just really wonderful people they've asked me to host this a couple of this event a couple of times I've always been gone and traveling so they called again and it was just an automatic yes one reason is I'm the most dominant force in ping-pong and I need to prove it here tonight and secondly but most importantly is definitely it's ping-pong for a purpose and what Clayton Kershaw and Ellen Kershaw have done with this program is absolutely incredible. Kershaw's Challenge is the charity that Clayton and I came up with really just because we saw a need that needed to be fulfilled and that was to build a home for children orphans in Africa. The biggest thing is just to help kids. I think that's what Ellen and I have come to really want to do with Kershaw's Challenge is just help kids that need help and over the years we've been able to raise over 20 million dollars now. This is our 12th year doing this and our 10th year of ping pong for purpose. And tonight it's about playing ping pong and getting to raise money and awareness for a good cause a cause that's really special to our family everybody has different passions outside of their sport you know obviously i play baseball but i grew up playing ping pong ping pong was like what me and my buddies did in high school and i thought that potentially it could be a fun charity event and it's turned into this and obviously having a stadium backdrop doesn't hurt either we kind of rigged the deck a little bit this year so mookie and freddie are going to play together and they're both pretty solid so i think that they'll be a good team and then I'm playing with Austin Barnes tonight and my dream partner is probably not Barnsie but yeah I usually beat him head-to-head so it's uh I'll probably carry him. He's pretty good though, he's really good. He's very competitive and he's one of my best friends so I I know Barnsie can play some ping pong so I'm gonna go with him. Just having our teammates here has just been incredible to see you know we don't get many off days and so for them to come out and support our charity support Christmas challenge and be here have a good time play ping-pong I don't take that for granted that's really cool so I've gotten to win it I think only maybe twice maybe twice but four years ago it's been a while so it's I think I'm due our friends our family come together with our teammates and have our baseball world collide with our Kershaw's Challenge world that's like I think more than anything I'm just blown away by my teammates that come out on off nights like this like this isn't their charity they could have been doing a million other things on their very few off nights so you know for them to be here and support us and support Kershaw's Challenge and have a good time is it is really really special We thank everybody for coming out tonight, man. It's been a great time.