Sunday was a day for rare occurrences at Dodger Stadium.  First and foremost, the Dodgers’ 8-0 win gave the team their first home series win since before Easter.  The Dodgers also registered a season high 17 hits, with the suddenly hot Rafael Furcal, Andre Ethier and Jay Gibbons contributing three hits each.  The game also marked the second complete game shutout in emerging star lefty Clayton Kershaw’s Major League career.  Kershaw’s pitching game score of 92 was his career high, beating the 84 he registered in a 2-0 win over Colorado in May of last season, and the 83 marks he posted in 2009 and 2010 (his other complete game shutout) over San Francisco.

While a complete game shutout for a Dodger starter is now about as common as an Aaron Miles home run, there was a time when pitchers finished what they started for Los Angeles.  On May 29, 1972, Don Sutton picked up a complete game victory in a 5-2 win at Candlestick Park against the Giants.  Sutton’s win made him a perfect 7-0 on the year.  He’d pick up his eighth win in his next start before losing for the first time on June 9th at home against the Pirates.

The complete game outing was one of a career high 18 for Sutton on the season, a year in which he’d post Cy Young Award worthy numbers (19-9 record, 2.08 ERA, nine shutouts).  Unfortunately for Sutton, 1972 was the year that Steve Carlton went 27-10 for the hapless Phillies and easily won the award for the National League’s best pitcher.

Sutton’s nine shutouts on the season was the second most ever for a Los Angeles Dodger starter, trailing only the 11 picked up by Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax in 1963.  For his career, Sutton’s 156 complete games trail only Don Drysdale (with 167) among Los Angeles Dodger pitchers.

For Don Sutton, the crowning achievement of his Major League career was his selection to the Baseball Hall of Fame.  The story of Kershaw’s career is in its beginning chapters, but the lanky lefty has shown the dominance that might someday earn him a spot among the Dodgers’ all-time greats on the mound.  With a 6-3 mark and a sub-3.00 ERA so far in 2011, Kershaw’s season appears to be headed in the right direction. Maybe yesterday’s Dodger win, made possible in large measure by the young Texan’s sterling effort, will get his team headed that way as well.