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(Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES – Baseball is a funny game.
It is often characterized as a game of failure, which it undoubtedly is. It tests your mettle and your toughness and your perseverance to push through six months of constant play with little to no rest. The reward for doing so? Another grueling, pressure-packed month that is the postseason, where every mistake is magnified and a single, ill-timed error or miscalculation can cost you your job and torpedo your reputation.
But it’s precisely because of that grind, because of that constant failure, because of that pressure, that the successes are so great when they come. It’s because of the rarity of those magical moments when talent and timing perfectly align that baseball remains a passion for generation after generation, continually refuting inaccurate claims of the game’s decline.
Freddie Freeman delivered one of those moments Friday night with his walkoff grand slam to give the Dodgers a stunning, electrifying 6-3 win over the Yankees in 10 innings in Game 1 of the World Series. It was the first walkoff grand slam in World Series history, and the first walkoff home run with a team down to its final out in a World Series game since Kirk Gibson’s legendary homer in 1988.
“It felt like nothing, just kind of floating,” Freeman said. “Those are the kind of things, when you’re five years old with your two older brothers and you’re playing wiffle ball in the backyard, those are the scenarios you dream about.
“Two outs, bases loaded in a World Series game. For it to actually happen and get a home run and walk it off to give us a 1-0 lead, that’s as good as it gets right there.”
Just as millions were inspired and awed and drawn to baseball by Gibson’s improbable walkoff home run off of Dennis Eckersley in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, tens of millions of fans too young remember that famous homer now have a signature moment of their own.
“Might be the greatest baseball moment I’ve ever witnessed, and I’ve witnessed some great ones,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “…I just felt good with Freddie at the plate. And just that swing, you knew it was gone.”
Freeman, like Gibson before him, had so many reasons to not be at his best. Earlier this season, his three-year-old son, Maximus, was hospitalized in the ICU with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a neurological disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks its nerves. Max went into full-body paralysis and, for a period, was placed on a ventilator to reinforce his lungs because the paralysis was affecting his diaphragm. Freeman spent days in the pediatric ICU, watching his son battle for his life.
Maximus pushed through and is expected to make a full recovery. Still, the experience understandably took a toll on Freeman, the kind that doesn’t go away quickly or easily.
“Freddie is unbelievable,” Dodgers righthander Jack Flaherty said. “…Just the work that he’s done, the year that he’s had, you appreciate that dude as a ballplayer and as a human being.”
And then there is the physical pain. Freeman suffered a serious right ankle sprain the final week of the regular season. He tried to play through it but hit just .219 with zero extra-base hits in 33 plate appearances during the NLDS and NLCS. An iron man who’s gone on the injured list just once in the last seven seasons, Freeman was so hobbled that he couldn’t play in Game 4 of the NLDS with the Dodgers facing elimination or the clinching Game 6 of the NLCS against the Mets.
Six days of rest between the NLCS and World Series provided some respite, but Freeman is far from 100%. Prior to Game 1, Roberts spoke of his desire to find opportunities to pull Freeman out of games early in the hopes of keeping him strong throughout the series.
In the first inning, Freeman hit a liner down the left-field line that Yankees left fielder Alex Verdugo misplayed off the wall. As the ball bounced away, Freeman made the turn around second and hobbled into third with a triple, much to the delight of Dodgers fans and the playful amusement of his teammates.
Still, it was another sign that he was far from peak form physically, and how much he’d be able to give the Dodgers was an open question.
Instead, he gave them everything. With the bases loaded, two outs and the Dodgers down by a run, Freeman unleashed a picturesque swing on Nestor Cortes’ first-pitch fastball on the inner half and demolished it. The ball left his bat at 109.2 mph, according to Statcast, and traveled a projected 409 feet.
As soon as he hit it, he knew it was gone. As Yankees right fielder Juan Soto pulled up at the wall and watched the ball sail over the wall, hours of nervous pent-up tension and energy exploded in Chavez Ravine.
“It’s been a lot these last few months, been a grind, but things have been going so well at home,” Freeman said. “Max is doing great. Obviously the ankle is the ankle. It’s a sprained ankle. It’s as good as it’s going to get.
“But when you get told you do something like that in this game that’s been around a very long time…I love the history of this game, to be a part of it, it’s special. I’ve been playing this game a long time, and to come up in those moments, you dream about those moments even when you’re 35 and been in the league for 15 years, you want to be a part of those.”
As soon as the ball landed in the right-field bleachers, the 52,394 fans inside Dodger Stadium screamed and jumped and danced in unbridled joy, hugging both loved ones and strangers alike. The stadium shook, tears streamed down individuals’ faces and people from all walks of life came together to celebrate a historic moment they will never forget.
It was, at its core, a demonstration of the beauty and the power of baseball at its best.
“To see the crowd, feel the ground shaking, the reactions, the teammates,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said, “that was just unbelievable.”
As Freeman jumped on home plate and his teammates mobbed him, the stadium shook all around. In the concourses and the stairwells, hordes of fans chanted “FRED-DIE! FRED-DIE!” at the top of their lungs, their words ringing off the concrete walls. More than an hour after Freeman’s slam, music blasted from the Dodger Stadium parking lot and car horns honked en masse—for once not out of frustration with Los Angeles traffic, but in celebration.
“Just the love, 53,000, 54,000 people every single night, doesn’t matter if it’s a Monday, Tuesday throughout the course of the season, they’re here supporting us,” Freeman said. “…They’ve been waiting a long time to see a World Series game here at Dodger Stadium, and I’m glad we were able to deliver a win tonight.”
Those on the other side of the blast were understandably less enthused.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone winced in pain as he watched Freeman round the bases. His decision to intentionally walk Mookie Betts and have Cortes, who hadn’t pitched since Sept. 18, face Freeman with the game on the line will be long scrutinized.
“Just taking the left-on-left matchup there,” Boone said. “No, I didn’t deliberate long.”
But in the end, the moment was less about what went wrong and more about what went right. In a game defined by struggle and failure, a man who has overcome so much reminded everyone the magic the game is capable of, and delivered a signature moment that will forever be ingrained in baseball lore and the memories of all who witnessed it.
“The game honors you, and when you do things the right way, you play the right way, you’re a good teammate, I just believe that the game honors you, “Roberts said. “Tonight, Freddie was honored.”
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