By the time Freddie Freeman walked into the interview room at Dodger Stadium on Friday night, he’d already been mobbed by his teammates at home plate, embraced everyone from reliever Blake Treinen to owner Mark Walter, run to the backstop to the share the moment with his father, had a five-gallon water cooler emptied on him in the middle of a nationally televised interview, received a bear hug from behind by Mookie Betts, dropped by his locker and walked down a hallway decorated with replicas of trophies and plaques won by the franchise’s greatest players.
Freeman still was jacked.
“I want to run through this table and tackle all of you guys,” he said with a laugh.
How could he possibly have come down after hitting one of the most dramatic home runs in baseball history?
How could he possibly be calm after hitting the first walk-off grand slam in the World Series?
How could he possibly not have waves of adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream after depositing a Nestor Cortes fastball into the right-field pavilion to deliver the Dodgers a 10-inning, 6-3 victory over the New York Yankees in Game 1?
“It’s going to be hard to sleep tonight,” Freeman said.
With two outs, two men on and first base open, Yankees manager Aaron Boone elected to intentionally walk the right-handed-hitting Betts, figuring the left-handed Cortes would have a better chance of registering the final out of the game against the left-handed-hitting Freeman.
“When you’re 5 years old with your two 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,” Freeman said.
As the ball traversed the October sky, Freeman raised his bat high over his head as if it were a torch. Rounding the bases, Freeman reported, “It felt like nothing, just kind of floating.”
Asked about Kirk Gibson’s pinch-hit, walk-off home run for the Dodgers in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, Freeman joked, “I played the whole game, though.”
That in itself was an achievement. This was the same player who couldn’t play the deciding game of the National League Championship Series because of a sprained right ankle.
This was the same player who played with a broken finger in the final month of the regular season as the Dodgers held off the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks to win the NL West.
This was the same player who missed eight games in the middle of the season because his 3-year-old son, Max, was temporarily paralyzed by a neurological disorder.
“The game honors you,” manager Dave Roberts 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.”
For that to happen, Freeman’s ankle had to be sufficiently healed. Freeman said he made it a point to not run between the NLCS and World Series.
“He’s doing something that is basically heroic, to put himself in a position to even be available, much less in the starting lineup,” Kiké Hernández said. “Freddie is Freddie, man. Freddie is a grinder. Not too many superstars grind the way Freddie does.”
Freeman was forced to test his ankle in the first inning when his liner struck the angled part of the wall down the left field line and bounced past oncoming Yankees outfielder Alex Verdugo.
“Stop!” Roberts recalled thinking.
Freeman didn’t. He reached third base.
There were no such fears in the 10th inning. But Freeman might not have even stepped into the batter’s box if Boone hadn’t elected to walk Betts so Cortes could face Freeman instead.
“We’ve been seeing it all year,” Freeman said. “They’ve been walking Shohei [Ohtani] to get to Mookie, Mookie to get to me.”
Shortstop Tommy Edman was on second base and preparing to score on a single. Up to that point, Freeman’s only extra-base hit of the postseason was his first-inning triple.
“I was definitely trying to get a huge secondary lead,” Edman said.
Freeman made it unnecessary by demolishing a 93-mph offering by Cortes.
“Normally, when you see a ball hit like that, your first reaction goes to the batter, and the batter is normally gonna tell you if he got it good or not,” third baseman Max Muncy said. “With Freddie, you normally don’t do that because Freddie usually just puts the bat down and runs. When you look at home plate and he’s got the bat in the air and he’s standing in the box, hasn’t even taken a step, you went, ‘Oh my gosh, that was pretty cool.’”
There was euphoria in the stands, on the Dodgers bench and on the basepaths.
“I wanted to stop and wait for him, but I couldn’t so I just kept running and screaming,” said Betts, who was on first base.
Freeman did more than win a game or make history.
“You dream of those moments even when you’re 35 and been in the league for 15 years,” Freeman said.
On Friday night, he lived that dream.
