Dodger Hero Freddie Freeman Is in It for the Love of the Game. And More.

Let’s start with the fundamentals.  Tonight on Fox at 5 p.m. Pacific time brings Game 3 of the Dodger-Yankees World Series, with the Dodgers holding a surprising (to most) 2-0 lead. Even more than typical in this grand a setting, the game offers multiple converging narratives, some bearing rich drama. Can Yankees slugger and captain Aaron Judge regain his batting form? Can suddenly-second-most-feared Dodger Shohei Ohtani overcome his shoulder injury? Can  Dodger starter Walker Buehler, third man up  in a  rotation that is prone to fraying at the seams, avoid being the guy who lets Judge get well? And can America’s populace unite around the national pastime just days from a possible compound fracture of our democracy?

A secondary but also compelling question is—can Freddie Freeman continue his heroics?

When I pitched the editors of Los Angles Magazine on a Freeman profile in May of 2022, I only reluctantly acceded to the thesis of “Can Freddie Freeman Save Baseball?” (See cover line above.) 

Damn if they weren’t mostly right.  Because Freddie Freeman has turned up big, again and again. And he turns up in the  fashion he has always promised and repeatedly executed regardless of injury (a bad ankle sprain) and a serious family challenge late this season as Max, age 3, fought off Guillain-Barre’ syndrome. 

He came to the plate in the roaring extra innings of Game 1, continuing to ignore the pain, and knocked a walk-off grand slam homer into the stands. Announcer Joe Davis aced the broadcasting challenge by simply stating, “She is gone! Gibby, meet Freddie.”  In two short phrases Davis paid tribute to the great announcer Vin Scully, to the storied  Kurt Gibson who was already on the mountaintop with his famous (and similalrly one-legged) clutch homer, and to the heartening simplicity of what some call “a boys’ game.”

 “The closest thing to a perfect baseball game possible,” stated the later ESPN coverage, adding, re tonight’s game, “the standard set for the rest of the series has gone from high to stratospheric.”

 Dodger manager Davey Roberts is so attuned to the Freeman ethos that he gave the local papers the definitive take: “The game honors you,” he said, “When you do things the right way, you play the right way, you’re a good teammate, I just believe the game honors you.

“Tonight, Freddie was honored.”

We journos often see the public face of various stars, even as those closer may some see a different persona. Based on the all but universal testimony of teammates and mentors, Freeman unfailingly reveals his compassionate and generous essence. When we spoke at Dodger Stadium in May, 2023, he was still finding his place here, having been shipped of by  the Atlanta Braves as the team that he’d grown of age with installed near-equal star Matt Olson at first base. So painful was this departure that he was still feeling the betrayal (“I felt blindsided”) as we spoke. And yet at the core he was unchanged. Much of our interview, in which he was articulate and frank, couldn’t find space in an essayistic cover story. But here are some highlights from that talk:

I don't know if the Braves fans could match the decibel count Dodger Stadium greeted you with the other day.

The Dodger fans are welcoming me and my family. You know, obviously, it's a big change when you are somewhere for 15 years. And to be able to come here and them chanting my name every single time up to the plate, it's been special. They know that I've been through a lot over the last couple months and they're just trying to make me feel warm and welcome

 Your high school coach and lasting guiding light, Steve Bernard, mentored your older brother as well, including when you sadly lost your mom as you were just ten years old. This even as your dad had his own health challenges.

So when my mom died, Steve took really good care of my oldest brother. And I couldn't have asked for a better four years [of high school]. I was on the varsity team as a freshman. And he was very hard on me on the academic side—let’s just say I wasn't ready for high school because I was 13 years old when I went into high school. And I was a little behind on the academics  because I wanted just to play baseball. 

He was just such a blessing to have  in my life. And we still talk to this day. He retired coaching baseball after my senior year, like, I'm done after you. He's just a special person who cared more about me the person than even as a teacher.

 And then came the day when the Braves wanted to sign you for over $400K as a bonus—which you took, rather than a baseball scholarship at Cal State Fullerton.

 We were going back and forth. My dad still wanted me to go to school. But it was a couple of days afterwards that they drafted me, and I went to my dad's room at three o'clock in the morning, knocked on the door. I said, “Dad, I just want to play baseball.”

 We said, “You could do this,” but looking back on it and talking about now, [it seems] like the dumbest thing ever. He goes, “If you don't make it to the big leagues within five years, you have to quit and go back to school.” And I said, sure sounds good to me. Now you think about it, getting to the big leagues in  five years is really hard to do. Most people don't get called up till like six, seven years in [the minor leagues]. It was not really a realistic thing. But luckily, I made it in three years.

Not without a rough patch where you didn’t think you even had the stuff.

It was Triple A, and I started hitting like .130 for the first time. I was like, man, maybe I'm not good enough. In 2010 was that last moment of, "I don't know if I can do it." I had my dad fly to Charlotte, North Carolina. And he watched me strike out three times in four at bats and he goes, “You're not swinging at a strike. Tomorrow you take a pitch and take until you actually get a strike. Next night. I got three hits—"Okay, I think I can do it.”

And you were already spraying a fair mount of hits to left field and all across the park--no opponent could  put an exaggerated shift on against you. 

I've always hit opposite fields. And that was my dad, he would throw me three buckets of pitches every day. And the first one always had to go to opposite fields. Next one, centerfield, etc. My dad always believed that was the best way to hit. Luckily, he was a little bit ahead of his time and knew, I guess, the shifts were coming.

The Braves needed not only a lefty bat but some inspiration.

I got thrown into a leadership role pretty early because in the 2014 season,  after four years of being in the big leagues, it was a rebuild… I was longest-tenured after five years I didn't want to be in that role; I’d always been the happy-go-lucky, goofy guy, just have fun. But then it just naturally came. I'm not a big--I'm gonna hold a team meeting. I'm not gonna rah-rah. I came up at the time of, just play the game the right way, and respect the game and lead by playing, trying to play every single game.

And after all the experience, hitting is still a bit of a mystery, yes?

It's the hardest thing to do. It's a round ball and a round bat and it's coming 95 miles an hour. Moving all different ways. You got to cover four different pitches and in four different quadrants. So I tried to keep it as simple as possible, because so much has to go right. You can do everything right and still be out. You still hit a ball 110 miles an hour and a line out, and you did everything right. 

The mystery only deepens in a slump.

The hardest thing in this game is to move on. Because you got 50,000 people here watching you and millions of other people watching on TV and you feel like you let your team down if you did something wrong.  There's social media, there's people coming at you being harsh and all that. That's just part of it. But you’ve got to block it as much as you can. But we all know you're giving it your all. You plan, you work hard, you do everything, and you can lay your head on your pillow and just be like, “Okay, I did everything I could. Baseball happened. I didn't play very well today. I'll try again tomorrow.”  

After many years of watching baseball the most heartening thing I ever saw was you comforting Jose Iglesias last month after his first hit of the season and he’d just lost his dad.

Yeah--that's what's so beautiful about this game.  

I’d had no idea he lost his dad. And I asked him what was wrong because I thought he was hurt, you know, and he just told me that he had lost his dad a couple of weeks prior. Obviously, I've been through losing the parent before and you just have compassion. That guy is going through so much in his heart, he's trying to give everything he has to help his team. All I could do is just give him a hug.  Because we are competing against each other. I can give him as much as I could, I want to give you so much more than just this little head tap. I just told him, “Man,  just know I care about you. I know what you're going through. Been there. You're on.”  He told me that his dad never missed a game, he watched every pitch and then I’m saying—“He’s not missing it, man. I promise you, you get that? He's not here physically, but he's watching every pitch. And this season is gonna be very hard to get through. But you're a strong person.” That's all I could do is just give him a hug.

Somehow you’ve drilled down to the humanity in a game and a league that can be quite unforgiving.

 If you look at my career numbers, I've gotten out 4000 times in my career. That's what I try to tell the young guys—if you get out, forget about it, move on to the next day. You’re still being considered one of the greatest of all time if you if you fail seven out of ten times That took me a long time. I still fight it. The hardest thing to deal with in this game is failure, and I failed a lot. 

And that's how I'm gonna continue to live life. And I just try and be as good as possible. Being a human is so hard. We all make mistakes every day. But at the end of the day, just be nice to people, be kind. You never know what someone's going through in their life. And you being nice to someone for two minutes could change that day. That's how I've always lived life. 

 And we're not perfect. But, you know, my wife and I are very, very religious and Christians and you know, we “love thy neighbor.” So we're gonna love until we're not here anymore.

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L.A. Mag, July 2022, Freeman cover story:

https://lamag.com/news-and-politics/can-l-a-dodger-freddie-freeman-save-baseball