Freeman family's trials put walk-off slam in perspective

LOS ANGELES -- With Dodger Stadium still bouncing, with his teammates still moshing around home plate, with “I Love L.A.” still blaring through the center-field speakers, Freddie Freeman finally broke loose from the crowd. He turned toward the backstop and spotted his dad, Fred.

Bad ankle and all, Freddie bolted. He reached the netting and -- on his good leg -- hopped onto that backstop. He put both hands on the net. Fred did the same. They smiled at each other, and they screamed incoherently at each other, and they looked at each other as though they’d been dreaming of this moment for decades, as Freddie grew up in nearby Orange County.

Because they had.

“He’s been throwing me batting practice since I can remember,” Freddie would later say. “That’s mostly his moment. ... That's Fred Freeman's moment right there.”

“This,” said a beaming Fred Freeman, trying to find the words. “This is so great.”

A moment for Fred. A moment for Freddie. A moment for the entire Freeman family -- which had been through more this summer than any family should ever have to go through.

On Friday night, Freddie Freeman authored the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history, sending Los Angeles to a 6-3 victory over the Yankees at Dodger Stadium.

Special in its own right. That moment will occupy a seismic place in baseball history, alongside other momentous October home runs. Freeman joined Kirk Gibson and Joe Carter as the only three players to hit a walk-off home run in the World Series with their teams trailing.

And, still, somehow, those comparisons don’t do justice to the magnitude of the moment for the Freeman family.

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Earlier this summer, Freddie’s 3-year-old son, Max, was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare condition in which the body's immune system attacks its nerves. In July, Max went into full paralysis. He spent more than a week in the pediatric ICU at Children’s Hospital of Orange County. Freddie left the team to be with Max, his wife Chelsea and their two other children.

Eventually, doctors informed the Freemans that Max was expected to make a full recovery, which wasn’t always a certainty. In early August, Freddie rejoined the Dodgers. Emotional and raw, he spoke about what he’d been through.

“We're one of the lucky ones that got Guillain-Barré that he might have a full recovery,” Freeman said at the time. “There are kids out there who are fighting for their lives right now. It just puts everything in perspective. … I would gladly strike out with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 of the World Series 300 million times in a row than see that again."

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In late September, Freddie suffered a severe ankle sprain on the night the Dodgers clinched the National League West. The postseason began 10 days later, and Freeman doggedly played through it, drawing the admiration of the baseball world -- and creating obvious parallels to Gibson’s walk-off in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.

Fred Freeman lived in Southern California and vividly recalled the Gibson at-bat. Thirty-six years later, he watched from the front row as his son limped his own way around the same basepaths. And yet, in Fred’s eyes, his son's perseverance was never about the ankle.

“You know, the ankle’s bad,” Fred said. “But the time with Max, as a family, it was -- you couldn’t even imagine. … That was the biggest thing. The sprained ankle is like: Who cares?”

On Friday night, that ankle was good enough for Freeman to be in the Game 1 lineup. That hasn’t always been the case this October; he’s missed several games because of it. Afterward, Freeman was caught unaware that he’d just hit the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history -- until a reporter started a question with that fact.

“Really?” he interrupted, dumbfounded.

Yes, really, he was informed. Guess where his thoughts went …

“That's pretty cool,” he said. “Obviously that's -- it's kind of amazing. It's been a lot these last few months, been a grind, but things have been going so well at home. Max is doing great.

“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.”

The type of moment that Fred Sr. and Freddie no doubt both envisioned when Freddie signed with Los Angeles after winning the 2021 World Series with Atlanta.

But, in Fred’s eyes, the move proved significant for other, more important, reasons.

“First of all, with Freddie coming home, Max got to go to [Children's Hospital of Orange County], and they saved his life,” Fred said. “That’s No. 1.

“But No. 2, he came home, and we get to see this. Because we live in Orange County. So it’s like the icing on the cake that we never expected. It’s been just a wonderful ride. We weren’t even sure he was going to play, and then he hits a walk-off grand slam.”

Because Max was there, Freddie would have been just fine with a bases-loaded strikeout. With 300 million bases-loaded strikeouts. But a walk-off grand slam?

“I just believe that the game honors you,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. “Tonight, Freddie was honored.”

Dodgers beat reporter Juan Toribio contributed to this story.