During his tenure with the team, Hershiser was a three-time All-Star, finishing in the top five in Cy Young voting four times in his first six full seasons.

Hershiser's most successful season came in 1988, when he set a major league record by pitching 59 consecutive innings without allowing a run.

After retirement as a player, he briefly worked as a coach and team executive for the Texas Rangers before serving as a color analyst for ESPN and then the Dodgers.

He also remains on the school's leaderboards in career winning percentage, strikeouts and earned run average (ERA).

He grew and gained 15 pounds (6.8 kg) that summer, which added 5 miles per hour (8.0 km/h) to his fastball and got him more playing time.

[1] He made the all-Mid-American Conference All-Star team his junior year, during which he pitched a no-hitter against Kent State on May 4, 1979.

The original scouting report on him for the draft said that he had poor control, a weak fastball, and threw the curveball incorrectly.

[15] He was almost included in a trade with the Texas Rangers that season, but catcher Jim Sundberg wanted his contract re-written before agreeing to the deal and the Dodgers backed out of the transaction.

[4] Hershiser won the Mulvey Award as the Dodgers top rookie in spring training in 1983 and expected to make the club but was sent back to Albuquerque where he was briefly reunited with pitching coach Rocky Giordani.

He came into the game in the seventh inning and retired all three batters he faced on two ground outs and a strikeout (of Tim Wallach).

[18] Hershiser played winter ball in the Dominican Republic after the season and worked with pitching coach Dave Wallace on his delivery.

He was almost arrested when some fireworks his friends were setting off for a New Year's party hit a Dominican General's house, but Dodger coach Manny Mota intervened on his behalf.

[4] Hershiser made the Dodgers Opening Day roster for the 1984 season as the last man in the bullpen and was mostly used as a long reliever early on.

[19] After getting pounded in one game, he received such a loud, verbal lashing from Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda that his teammates took to calling it the "sermon on the mound".

[1] He became a full-fledged starter in the Dodger rotation in July and responded by pitching four complete game shutouts that month, which was good enough to tie for the most in the Majors that season (with Joaquín Andújar and teammate Alejandro Peña).

[18] Hershiser started to feel sick playing golf a week before pitchers and catchers reported, and it was discovered he needed an emergency appendectomy.

[39] Hershiser was involved in the negotiations as part of the Major League Baseball Players Association[40] but the strike signaled the end of his time with the Dodgers and he became a free agent.

[18][41] Indians General Manager John Hart said that the team was looking for a veteran with "character and competitiveness" to show the young players how to play the right way.

[41][46] In his final World Series appearance in 1997 he gave up 13 runs in 10 innings and lost 2 games to the Florida Marlins.

[48] Hershiser signed a one-year $3.45 million contract with the San Francisco Giants on December 7, 1997, but his age was beginning to catch up to him.

[18] He served as a mentor to the young pitchers on the Mets staff and helped them make the playoffs by allowing just one run in 5+1⁄3 innings in a 2–1 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates in the last game of the season.

[51] He pitched out of the bullpen in the playoffs as the Mets lost to the Braves in the 1999 National League Championship Series.

[61] In October 2005 Hershiser was mentioned as a candidate to replace Jim Tracy as manager of the Dodgers, but the position went to Grady Little.

[68] In 2014, Hershiser left ESPN and rejoined the Dodgers as a television analyst for their new regional sports network SportsNet LA.

[69] At the time, he teamed with Charley Steiner and Nomar Garciaparra to call Dodger road games not played in California when Vin Scully reduced his travel.

Since 2017, he has worked with Joe Davis as the primary broadcast team for Dodger baseball following Scully's retirement at the end of the 2016 season.

Playing under the PokerStars banner, Hershiser stunned the poker world by making the quarterfinals, defeating 2006 event champion Ted Forrest, Allen Cunningham, and Freddy Deeb[72]—players who had won a total of 12 World Series of Poker bracelets heading into the event.

[73] Hershiser has played in a number of events, including the 2008 World Series of Poker and the 2009 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

Hershiser won $54,570 on September 7, 2008, by taking ninth place in the $10,000 Pokerstars World Championship of Online Poker Event 5.

[84] On an appearance on The Tonight Show after the 1988 World Series, Johnny Carson talked him into singing hymns for the audience.