Moments past home plate, his 409-foot homer over the right-field fence and the packed Dodger Stadium crowd erupting Friday night in the 10th inning, Freddie Freeman rushed to the seats behind the batter’s box to celebrate with him. Father through the web.
“I am [was] He screams in the face,” Freeman joked during a postgame interview on the field with Fox. “I’m sorry, Dad.”
But in the midst of a trying season and a trying postseason, Freeman dedicated his walk-off grand slam in the World Series opener — which gave the Dodgers a 6-3 win and would serve as one of the defining swings of his career — to him. The father, Fred, says, “It’s not my moment, it’s my dad’s moment.”
“He’s the reason for my swing,” Freeman told reporters. “My attitude is because of him. He is what I am. It was kind of motivating. … I wanted to share it with him because he was there. He has also been through a lot in his life and to have a moment like that, I wanted to be a part of that moment with him.
Freeman missed eight games in late July and early August after his 3-year-old son Maximus developed a serious illness called “Guillain-Barré syndrome.”
Maximus, at one point, “declined rapidly and suffered full-body paralysis,” Chelsea wrote, due to a rare neurological condition. .
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Then, near the end of the regular season, Freeman suffered an ankle injury that forced him to sit through the regular season games he could play.
He missed Game 4 of the NLDS with the Dodgers season-ending.
He missed Games 4 and 6 of the NLCS.
But Freeman said his leg felt better Friday night, when he turned a ball off the wall in foul territory into a triple that Yankees outfielder Alex Verdugo misplayed.
Then, later in the night, with the Dodgers down one and an early World Series advantage slipping away, Freeman made the Yankees pay for Mookie Betts on purpose and Nestor Cortes faced the former MVP.
“Once he got going, I knew it was a good swing,” Fred Athletic said. “But you never know. [I thought] Is that enough? Is that enough? Then I saw him drop the mic with the bat. I know it’s gone.”