KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Albert Pujols got the first and Gerardo Parra the most recent. In between them, 359 players combined for 945 more of baseball's great treasure: a hit off Clayton Kershaw. It's a keepsake, a memento for conversations decades from now, when the baseball world glances back at the beginning of Kershaw's career and recognizes how truly remarkable it was.

He's in the midst of his seventh season, and even after three straight National League ERA titles, a pair of Cy Young Awards and the seven-year, $215 million contract, the 26-year-old Kershaw won't stop getting better. Only in the official box score was his no-hit, no-walk, 15-strikeout masterpiece last week against the Colorado Rockies not perfection. Hanley Ramirez's error couldn't soil the sense of a master craftsman at his apex, swing after feeble swing telling Kershaw's story far better than words, numbers or pictures possibly could.

All they wanted was a measly hit – a dribbler down the third-base line, an excuse-me check-swing doinker into right field, a broken-bat double that kicks up some chalk. Anything is better than nothing. Nearly 43 percent of the 631 hitters Kershaw has faced haven't got a hit off him. Poor Tim Lincecum is 0 for 12. At least he's got an excuse that he's a pitcher. Jonathan Lucroy and Jason Heyward hit for a living and are 0 for 10. Forty-nine players went hitless in their only at-bat against Kershaw. The marriage of his relentlessness and natural talent is the unholiest of matrimonies for hitters.

And it's what the Kansas City Royals faced Tuesday night at Kauffman Stadium. Within the last week, they had lit up past Cy Young winners Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer and Zack Greinke. They wanted Kershaw, in his first game after the no-hitter, as their next pelt. None of Kershaw's previous 194 games pitched came against Kansas City, which left the Royals' thinking in particularly wishful territory. To see Clayton Kershaw for the first time is to stare down the impossible and endeavor to conquer it.

Before every game, small TV screens in the Royals' clubhouse broadcast a highlight clip of the opposing starting pitcher's previous couple games. If hitters don't want to study the pitcher on their iPads or use video consoles, perhaps the looping film will foster knowledge by osmosis.

Billy Butler didn't pay all that much attention to it. "He's the best pitcher in the world," Butler said. And it wasn't resignation so much as recognition that anybody who goes into the batter's box against Kershaw with a game plan is likely to watch it vanish amid a flurry of fastballs, sliders and curveballs.

Butler is the Royals' longtime designated hitter, the most tenured player in the clubhouse despite being only 28 years old, a former All-Star and Silver Slugger winner who entered Tuesday's game with 1,200 career hits. He has faced great pitchers and hit great pitchers and looked clueless against great pitchers. Baseball has a special way of making the best hitters look downright mediocre 70 percent of their at-bats. The game's natural balance, its true order, emanates from a lopsided advantage apportioned to the pitcher. He stands atop the mound and dictates the game, with hitters hoping they guess right and hoping even more they make the proper adjustment if they don't.

"If you've never faced someone, you stick to your strengths," Kershaw said. "Unless something is glaring – where they really hit this pitch in a certain situation."

Kershaw did not go into his at-bats against Butler looking to feed him one particular pitch again and again. He would present a mélange of his finest offerings and dare Butler to get his keepsake. To illustrate what it's like trying to get a hit off Kershaw, Butler agreed to guide Yahoo Sports through a single at-bat, pitch-by-pitch, and explain his thoughts, his ideas and, ultimately, the outcome.

It was the fourth inning. Eric Hosmer stood on first base, owner of the only two hits to that point against Kershaw. The Dodgers led 1-0.

First pitch: 92-mph fastball, inside corner

Butler stared at the pitch. He wasn't going to hit into another first-pitch double play, as he had in the first inning. Home-plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt called it a strike. Butler disagreed. He thought the pitch was inside. It wasn't. Being down 0-1 to Kershaw is no treat.

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