Freeman feels good enough to slam and dance

The most worrisome ankle in L.A. holds up long enough for the Dodgers to win in the 10th.

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He did not limp to the plate, or around the bases. He was in the lineup all along, played all ten innings, even legged out a triple. And, no, he was not facing anything close to Dennis Eckersley.

Those are just details, of course. It’s Hollywood. The sequel doesn’t have to be verbatim.

Freddie Freeman did a semi-Kirk Gibson in Game 1 of the World Series Friday night, a shot that reverberated through Dodger Stadium, and into the downtown arena where the Lakers were playing, and into the Coliseum where USC was waiting to play Rutgers, and into SoFi Stadium where high schoolers were playing, and into millions of living rooms where the Dodgers and Yankees used to visit, every October.

Freeman did not have an extra-base hit in the first two rounds of the playoffs. His sprained ankle actually knocked him out of three games. It’s easier to keep Lindsay Graham away from a TV camera than it is to keep Freeman off the field. In eight of his 14 full seasons he has played at least 157 games, and twice he’s done the full 162. To keep hope alive, he would show up six hours before game time for rehab and manipulation, which wasn’t at all painless.

But the Dodgers had five full off days since they won the National League Championship Series, and Freeman was his frisky self against the Yankees. When Juan Soto couldn’t herd Freeman’s drive into the rightfield corner, Freeman was able to rumble into third base. In the 10th, he stepped in with bases loaded against Nestor Cortes, and he sent a drive into the delirium of the right-field pavilion for a 6-3 victory, just as Gibson had done as a pinch-hitter in Game 1 of the ‘88 World Series against Oakland and Eckersley. Back then, of course, the Dodgers had no intention of playing Gibson, who had wrecked his legs in another NLCS (also against the Mets), but the 1988 N.L. MVP began warming up without telling anybody, and he came up to make the 27th out. When he got the famous backdoor slider he did not miss it, and the Dodgers won and went on to upset the Athletics in five games.

Joe Davis, the well-prepared Dodger play-by-play man who works the Fox games with John Smoltz, yelled, “She is gone!” when Freeman’s ball landed, just as Vin Scully had done for Gibson. Scully also said, “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened,” and none of that applies here. The Dodgers are quite probable, as is Freeman.

“I can’t feel my ankle right now,” Freeman said after he circled the bases and then sought out his dad Fred, an accountant whose office overlooks the field at El Modena High in Orange, Ca., where Freddie played. Fred would sometimes see Bob Boone throwing batting practice to sons Bret and Aaron. He noticed that the ex-catcher would insist that his kids hit to the opposite field (something Bob almost never did) before they were allowed to pull the ball. So Fred did the same thing with Freddie when the time came. Aaron Boone, of course, is the Yankees’ manager now, and he turned and walked back through the dugout tunnel as Freeman rounded third base.

Freeman is a career .300 hitter with an .899 OPS. He is the active MLB leader in career runs, hits (2,267), runs batted in and total bases. Real life has been far more challenging than baseball. He hit .341 and won the MVP in 2020, the year he also came down with a vicious case of Covid-19, ran up a fever of 104.3, and, at one point, considered his imminent mortality. He also scratched his cornea and couldn’t focus on the baseball for a season before he got his contact lens formula figured out. All of that happened in Atlanta, but this year Freeman missed time because his son Maximus had Guillain-Barre Syndrome, wound up on a ventilator, could not speak and was in fact paralyzed. Max is fine now and attended Game 1.

Freeman has been in L.A. for three years. For the 11 years before that, he was the most essential Brave, coming through the system with Jason Heyward, tolerating a system rebuild that culminated in the 2021 World Series win, in which Freeman hit .318 against Houston. Maximus’ middle name is Turner, after Turner Field in Atlanta. The Braves eliminated the Dodgers in that NLCS, but they dragged their feet in contract talks, and Freeman shocked them by signing with L.A. the next spring. But not all Dodger fans liked the way Freeman remained emotionally connected with the Braves.

At least Freeman was back home, in another winning atmosphere, and it isn’t bad to be surrounded by other MVPs and All-Stars. Dan Plesac of MLB Network watched Freeman rip Cortes’ fastball, hold up the bat and then drop it like a microphone as he began to trot. He said it was the first time it really dawned on him that Freeman was a full-blooded Dodger.

The game itself featured good starts from Gerrit Cole and Jack Flaherty, some acrobatic left-fielding from the Yankees’ Alex Verdugo, and some Yankee bungling at second base that would have embarrassed Chuck Knoblauch and Bobby Richardson. When Gleyber Torres let Juan Soto’s throw to second get away, he allowed Shohei Ohtani to get to third base and thus score on Mookie Betts’ sacrifice fly. 

Oswaldo Cabrera replaced Torres later and couldn’t handle a grounder by Tommy Edman in the 10th. That moved Gavin Lux to second, after Jake Cousins had walked him. Verdugo ran furiously to reach out and catch Ohtani’s foul fly ball, even though he knew he would go headlong into the seats to do so. When he did, the runners were moved up to second and third, which meant Boone could order an intentional walk to Betts, and have the left-handed Cortes face Freeman.

The intelligentsia wanted to know why Boone used Cortes, since he’s a starting pitcher who hasn’t worked since Sept. 18. Tim Hill was available, as a lefty reliever who has a reputation for getting lefties out, but they hit .273 against him this year.   Boone said he liked the matchup. What he probably didn’t like was the straight inside fastball that Freeman crushed.

It was yet another match thrown on the pyre of the modern relief pitcher. Bullpens have been charged with 17 losses in this postseason and have given up 44 home runs. They also have 23 saves in 40 opportunities. The Dodgers weren’t immune. Jazz Chisholm stole second and third off Blake Treinen and thus scored on Anthony Volpe’s hard grounder, to tie it in the Yankees’ ninth. 

Chisholm might have done the same thing under the old rules, but the limits on pickoff throws clearly should be suspended for the playoffs, like the ghost runners are. It was a baseball abnormality that was adopted to shorten the games. Nobody cares how long the playoff games are. This one lasted three hours and 27 minutes, and you couldn’t turn away, not until Freeman’s blast from the Dodger past.