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The slider was sizzling. The hitter was frozen. The strikeout was roaring.

With an 84-mph pitch on the black in the sixth inning against the Chicago White Sox Wednesday at a rollicking Dodger Stadium, Clayton Kershaw struck out Vinny Capra looking to become the 20th player in baseball history to record 3,000 strikeouts.

As impressive as the pitch itself was the cementing of a truth that has taken nearly two decades to become evident.

Clayton Kershaw is the greatest pitcher in Dodgers history.

Clayton Kershaw records his 3,000th career strikeout as the Dodgers take on the Chicago White Sox at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday.

(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)

Greater than even the great Sandy Koufax.

Gasp. Scream. Please.

This opinion appeared here three years ago and was swarmed with a barrage of emphatic and mostly emotional arguments for Koufax.

How dare you diss our Sandy! Koufax won more championships! Koufax never choked in the postseason! Koufax was more dominant!

All true, Koufax being a tremendous human being worthy of every syllable of praise. But as Wednesday so clearly proved in front of a history-thirsty crowd at Chavez Ravine, Kershaw has done something that any defense of Koufax can not equal.

He’s endured. He’s taken the ball far more than Koufax while outlasting him in virtually every impact pitching category.

The Dodgers’ 5-4 victory Wednesday was the perfect illustration of the grinding that has lifted Kershaw to the Dodger heavens. He didn’t have his best stuff, he was battered by one of baseball’s worst teams for four runs on nine hits, but he fought through six innings to dramatically record his third strikeout and end his quest for 3,000 on his final hitter with his 100th pitch.

“I made it interesting, for sure,” Kershaw said afterward. “I made it take too long.”

When he took the mound at the start of the sixth, just one strikeout shy of 3,000, the crowd erupted in deafening screams previously only matched by a World Series win. When he breathtakingly struck out Capra — this was his last hitter regardless — he stalked off the mound and sighed and offered the thunderous crowd a sweaty wave.

“It’s a little bit harder when you’re actually trying to strike people out,” said Kershaw with a chuckle. “Running back out there in the sixth and hearing that crowd roar was up there for me, special moments…It was an amazing night.”

A young Dodgers fan holds up a sign that reads “3,000” to celebrate Clayton Kershaw’s strikeout milestone.

(Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)

In all, it was pure Kershaw, and it has been unmatched even by his legendary predecessor.

Koufax was a meteor, streaking across the sky for the greatest five seasons of any pitcher in baseball history.

Kershaw, meanwhile, has become his own planet, looming above for 18 years with a permanent glow that is unmatched in Dodgers lore.

Koufax was an amazing flash. Kershaw has been an enduring flame.

Koufax was Shaq. Kershaw is Kobe.

When this was previously written, manager Dave Roberts waffled on the question of whether Kershaw was the greatest Dodger pitcher ever.

This time, not so much.

“Obviously, Sandy is Sandy,” he said Wednesday. “You’re talking about 18 years, though, and the career of the body of work. It’s hard to not say Clayton, you know, is the greatest Dodger of all time.”

When one talks about the GOAT of various sports, indeed, a key element is always longevity. Tom Brady played 23 seasons, LeBron James has played 22 seasons and Babe Ruth played 22 seasons.

One cannot ignore the fact that Kershaw, in his 18th season, has played six more seasons than Koufax while pitching 463 more regular season innings. With his 3,000 strikeouts he has also fanned 604 more batters than Koufax, the equivalent of 22 more games composed solely of strikeouts, an unreal edge.

In the great Koufax debate, Kershaw is clearly being punished for his postseason struggles, and indeed his 4.49 postseason ERA doesn’t compare to Koufax’ 0.95 ERA.

But look at the sample size. Kershaw has pitched in 39 postseason games while Koufax has appeared in just eight. Kershaw has had 13 postseason starts that have lasted past the sixth inning while Koufax has had five.

Kershaw has pitched in multiple playoff rounds in multiple seasons, while Koufax never pitched in more than one playoff round per season, greatly increasing Kershaw’s opportunity for failure.

Kershaw has indeed stunk up the joint in some of the most devastating postseason losses in Dodger history. But he has taken the mound for nearly five times as many big games as Koufax and, in the end, he has just one fewer World Series championship.

“I’ve been through it, a lot, ups and downs here, more downs that I care to admit,” said Kershaw. “The fans … it was overwhelming to feel that.”

In the end, the strongest argument for Koufax supporters is the seemingly obvious answer to a question. If you had to win one game, would you start Koufax or Kershaw?

Of course you’d pitch Koufax … if your parameters were limited to five years. But if you wanted to pick a starter and you had to do it inside a two-decade window, you would take Kershaw.

Then there are those rarely recited stats that further the argument for Kershaw over Koufax: Kershaw has a better career ERA, 2.51 to 2.76. Kershaw has a better winning percentage, .697 to .655. And despite playing in an era where individual pitching wins are greatly cheapened, Kershaw has 51 more wins than Koufax.

How rare is 3,000 strikeouts? More pitchers have won 300 games. Only three other pitchers have done so left-handed. Only two pitchers in the last 100 years have done it with one team.

Now for the intangibles. If this is indeed the golden age of Dodger baseball — as Andrew Friedman so deftly described it — then the guardian of the era has been Kershaw.

The clubhouse culture is borne of his constantly present professionalism. The work ethic starts with him. The accountability is a reflection of him. For 18 years, through injury and embarrassment as well as fame and fortune, he has never complained, never blamed, never pointed fingers, never brought distraction.

And he always shows up for work. Every day. Every game. Every season. Clayton Kershaw has always been there, which is why he will be there forever on a statue that will surely be erected in the center field plaza next to the bronze figures of Jackie Robinson and, yes, of course, Sandy Koufax.

It is unlikely the Dodgers would ever script the words, “The greatest Dodger pitcher” on the base of his statue. They are understandably sensitive to Koufax and his legacy and importance to a legion of longtime fans.

But they know, just as those fans lucky enough to be at Dodger Stadium Wednesday know it.

They weren’t just watching greatness. They were watching The Greatest.

Eric Bauman, a gruff and tireless political operative who led two of California’s most powerful Democratic organizations before resigning amid misconduct allegations, died Monday.

His family said in a statement that Bauman died at UCLA West Valley Medical Center after a long illness. He was 66.

Born in the Bronx to an Army doctor and a registered nurse, Bauman went to military school and moved to Hollywood just before he turned 18. He became a nurse and met his husband, also a nurse, in a hospital cafeteria during an overnight shift in the early 1980s.

Motivated in part by the AIDS crisis, Bauman became active in the Stonewall Democratic Club Los Angeles, a progressive political group, and was elected president of the organization in 1994.

Bauman grew L.A. County Democratic Party into a political force as chairman from 2000 to 2017 and expanded the number of Democrats winning elections at every level of government, from water boards to the U.S. House of Representatives.

“I turned the L.A. Democratic Party from a $50,000-a-year organization into a $1.5 million-a-year organization,” he told a reporter in 2011.

With a Bronx affect and a gold signet ring on his pinkie finger that he twisted when he was under pressure, Bauman built a reputation as an old-school party boss who would give you the bad news straight. Democrats compared him to Ray Liotta, and some called him the “Godfather of Democratic politics.”

“People come up to me on the street all the time and think I’m Joe Pesci,” he told the Times in 2017. “I try to work with that.”

Bauman ran for state Democratic Party chair in 2017. After a bruising election that exposed the fractures between the progressive and establishment wings of the party, Bauman was elected by a mere 62 votes.

He was the first openly gay and first Jewish person to chair the party.

“I don’t wear a button that says, ‘Look at me, I’m gay,’” Bauman said in a 2009 interview with the UCLA Film and Television Archive. But, he said, “I never fail to recognize my partner from any podium. It is in my bio. It is a part of who I am.”

The high point of his tenure was the 2018 midterm elections, when California Democrats flipped seven seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and won back a veto-proof supermajority in the state Legislature.

Bauman said he wanted to overturn California’s voter-approved “jungle primary” system, which allows the top two vote-getters to advance to the general election, regardless of party. Bauman argued that Democrats should pick their own nominees, rather than spending millions of dollars fighting in the primaries.

In late 2018, The Times reported that Bauman had made crude sexual comments and had engaged in unwanted touching or physical intimidation in professional settings, citing 10 party staff members and political activists.

Bauman resigned, saying he planned to seek treatment for health issues and alcohol use. The state Democratic Party fired top staffers in the wake of the allegations and eventually paid more than $380,000 to settle a sexual misconduct lawsuit brought by three of his accusers. A party spokeswoman did not respond to requests for a statement on Bauman’s death Tuesday.

After his resignation, Bauman disappeared from public life for several years. More recently, he began hosting a radio show called “The UnCommon Sense Democrat” on the Inland Empire’s KCAA-AM 1050.

In the mid-2000s, when Republicans still represented many outlying areas of Los Angeles County, Bauman set up a “red zone program” at the L.A. County Democratic Party that funneled money and volunteers to Democrats running for seats in GOP strongholds.

The investments were a gamble, but they built relationships and better candidates — and sometimes, a long shot candidate actually won, said former state lawmaker Miguel Santiago, who first got involved with the party in the early 2000s.

“He was really hungry for Democratic wins,” Santiago said. “There was no seat that that guy left on the table, whether it was a community college seat, a school board race, a water board race.”

Bauman also worked to strengthen ties with organized labor, now the California Democratic Party’s most powerful ally, and build voter registration and turnout.

State Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, who chaired the county party after Bauman, said he spent countless hours as a young volunteer entering information about newly registered voters into the party database.

The data came from a booth that the Democratic Party set up outside citizenship ceremonies where newly eligible voters could register to vote as Democrats, he said. Bauman sent a signed card to each person, congratulating them and welcoming them to the party.

“That touched people, and it showed them that they matter,” Gonzalez said.

Bauman also worked for Gov. Gray Davis and insurance commissioner John Garamendi and as a consultant to several Assembly speakers, including Anthony Rendon of Los Angeles and Toni Atkins of San Diego.

He is survived by his husband and partner of 42 years, Michael Andraychak, and his father and sister, Richard and Roya Bauman.