When news spread on Friday that Dodgers left-hander Alex Wood had been added to the 2017 National League’s All-Star team as a replacement for ace left-hander Clayton Kershaw, the 26-year-old Charlotte, North Carolina native and former Georgia Bulldog was, as you can imagine, elated.

“I’m really really excited, it’s definitely one of the coolest things that’s happened to me in my life and in my career,” Wood told reporters on Friday. “It still hasn’t completely kind of sunk in yet but I’m sure once I step on that field and I’m surrounded by all those guys on Monday I’ll start thinking a lot more emotion, but I’m very humbled by it and I’m very very excited.”

But Wood isn’t the only member of the Dodgers organization excited that his perfect 10-0 season led to his eleventh-hour selection to the prestigious Midsummer Classic. It seems that the only other Dodgers pitcher to start a season with a perfect 10-0 record heading into the All-Star break since 1955 is equally excited for the young left-hander. That is, of course, 1949 NL Rookie of the Year, inaugural 1956 Cy Young award winner, and 1956 NL MVP Don Newcombe.

“It’s amazing, it’s a wonderful thing. A young man like him – or anybody – and he’s a Dodger, as long as he’s a Dodger and doing it for us, it’s wonderful,” said the 91-year-old Dodgers legend. “I just hope he continues on and I hope he has a wonderful season for us like I had in 1955. I went from 10 straight, I won 20 and lost five and into the World Series.”

It’s been 62 years since Dodgers legend Don Newcombe began the 1955 season with a perfect 10-0 record. Is it possible that Alex Wood with his current 10-0 record will finish the 2017 season with similar results?
(Photo courtesy of LA Dodgers)

Newcombe added that he had an opportunity to meet and talk with Wood earlier in the day on Friday where they spent time talking about their common yet rare accomplishment.

“This morning I met with him. I had a little conversation with him and he said ‘Is that possible?’ I said ‘You do it, you’ll find out … see what they do,” said the Dodger great. “It’s wonderful for him, it’s wonderful for the organization to see what he is able to do.”

Whether or not it’s possible for Wood to finish the 2017 season going 20-5 and then going on to win a World Series title is a chapter that has yet to be written. But it has to be reassuring for the extremely polite yet intensely fierce young left-hander to know that he has one of the greatest Dodgers of all time in his corner.