Freddie Freeman contemplated the question, stared quietly into the distance, then struggled to articulate an answer.
Five months after the fact, his swing for the ages was still sinking in.
On Oct. 25, in a night forever etched into Dodgers and Major League Baseball lore, Freeman delivered his walk-off grand slam in Game 1 of the World Series. With just one swing, he’d altered the outcome of a season, the fortunes of a franchise and the emotions of a fan base starved for more than three decades for a full-season championship.
But on this day, during the final week of Dodgers spring training earlier this month, Freeman said he was “still trying to process” his personal perspective on his moment of history.
The totality of that one swing — out of the countless thousands he has taken during a 15-year career in the majors that, with his eight All-Star selections, 2020 MVP award and nearly 2,300 total hits, was already on a potential Hall of Fame track — had yet to fully resonate within him.
“It’s hard to wrap [your mind] around, when you’re so fresh out of it,” Freeman said while standing outside the Dodgers’ Camelback Ranch facility, where nearby fans began chanting his name in the background. “But yeah, I can’t go anywhere anymore without someone coming up. Everyone knows who I am.”
For Freeman, moments like these have provided the most meaningful clarity, best illustrating to him the significance of the walk-off slam.
The 35-year-old slugger, of course, has long operated beneath the spotlight of celebrity. He was the face of a franchise for one World Series winner before, leading the Atlanta Braves to the title in 2021. He became a beloved figure in the Southland the following spring, when the Orange County native returned home to sign with the Dodgers in one of the many blockbuster acquisitions that preceded last year’s championship.
This offseason, however, was different. Not only because of the “10-fold, maybe even 20-, 30-, 40-, 50-fold” increase in attention he said he garnered in public, from grocery stores and charity appearances, to well-attended fan events or simply quiet days out of the house. But more so, he noted, because of what the people who stopped him repeatedly said.
Freddie Freeman holds his bat in the air as he watches his walk-off grand slam in Game 1 of the World Series against the Yankees at Dodger Stadium.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
“There’s not a day that goes by where someone doesn’t say, ‘Thank you,’” Freeman relayed. “And I’m appreciative of it. Because obviously, it means something really good happened.”
With a laugh, Freeman joked that “I’m still not Shohei,” his fame remaining dwarfed by that of his internationally recognizable Japanese teammate.
But as Freeman has internalized the impact of his World Series moment this offseason, it’s been through those ceaseless interactions with fans that he realized the impact the moment made on him.
“I like to just kinda do my job and go home,” he said earlier this spring, when he only half-jokingly acknowledged being “very uncomfortable” with all of his newfound attention. “But that’s OK. I appreciate it. I really do … You appreciate what you were able to create for people. I don’t take that for granted.”
There might be only one person in the world who can relate to what Freeman has, and will, experience in the wake of his World Series heroics.
And in the moment, he could feel Freeman’s grand slam was about to happen.
Back in 1988, Kirk Gibson hit the most famous home run in Dodgers history. While playing through a muscle tear in his left hamstring and ligament tear in his right knee, he hit a walk-off home run in Game 1 of that year’s World Series, fist-pumping his way around the bases while catapulting the Dodgers to an eventual championship.
So, when Freeman — who was playing through his own injuries last October, including a badly sprained right ankle and torn left rib cartilage — came to the plate in the bottom of the 10th inning in Game 1 of last year’s Fall Classic, Gibson couldn’t help but have a flashback.
He had a premonition that history would repeat itself.
Kirk Gibson raises his arms as he rounds the bases after hitting a game–winning two-run homer in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.
(Los Angeles Times)
“I just felt it happening before it happened,” said Gibson, who was listening to a radio broadcast of the game on his phone while huddled with some friends at a cabin in Michigan. “The thought entered my mind — much the same way it entered my mind when I was gonna have the opportunity. It’s just like, the perfect storm just keeps developing.”
Indeed, Freeman delivered in almost exactly the same way Gibson did. He launched his home run to the right field pavilion, not far from where Gibson’s ball landed 36 years earlier. He celebrated with his own iconic reaction, holding his bat in the air Statue of Liberty-style. Even the timing was eerily similar — both home runs were hit at 8:37 p.m.
“When you hit a ball that square, that solid, you don’t even really feel it,” Gibson said, remarking on yet another parallel of the two blasts in a recent phone interview. “You know from experience it’s going to go a long way. So then you get your bat on the ground, and your hand in the air.”
“Or fist in the air, in my case,” Gibson added with a laugh.
Kirk Gibson’s game-winning home run from Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.
“To get the opportunity, and follow through on the opportunity, it’s ecstatic. It’s very decadent. Feels real good. Tastes real good.”
Still, like Freeman, Gibson also struggled to initially appreciate the magnitude of his moment.
Like Freeman, it was interactions in public with fans that opened his eyes to its long-lasting resonance.
“It’s very humbling to this day for people to say, ‘Oh, he’s the guy who hit the home run,’” Gibson said. “They start pumping their arm. It’s a little bit embarrassing; and that’s probably not a good word … But when they do that, they mean well.”
For Freeman, some interactions stood out more than most this winter. Like the two separate instances fans showed him tattoos they got to commemorate his World Series walk-off. Or the man he met at a preseason luncheon who told him the home run had prompted him to give up drinking.
“He wanted to be with his kids, present, [because] they were in the right field stands,” Freeman recalled at the Dodgers’ fan fest event before the start of spring. “He didn’t drink that whole game, and he hasn’t drank since, because of how present he was with his kids.”
“Those are the stories,” Freeman added, “that give me chills.”
Still, nothing compares to the simple “thank you” many who have approached him have felt obliged to offer. And the more it started happening, the more Freeman understood what the moment meant to him.
When Freeman first arrived in Los Angeles in 2022, he was still grappling with the emotions of his unexpected departure from Atlanta that offseason (yet another similarity with Gibson, a longtime Detroit Tiger who described feeling “melancholy” when he first arrived in Los Angeles in 1988). As Freeman struggled with his transition, it was Dodger Stadium chants of “Fred-die! Fred-die!” that helped him feel welcome in his new home.
Last August, when Freeman returned from a weeklong absence while his 3-year-old son, Max, battled a frightening neurological disorder that left the toddler temporarily paralyzed, a rousing ovation at Dodger Stadium accompanied his first at-bat back.
“These three years I’ve been here, it’s hard to put into words what the Dodgers fans have meant to us and our family,” Freeman said that night. “In the toughest times, it shows the true character of this organization’s fans, and it’s absolutely incredible.”
It’s why he believes, when he rounded the bases in Game 1 of the World Series a couple months later, he was so animated amid the walk-off Chavez Ravine scene.
Freddie Freeman was very animated as he rounded the bases after his walk-off grand slam to win Game 1 of the World Series last fall.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
There was his iconic bat raise, of course, which marked a stark break from character for someone who proudly claims to have “never pimped a home run.” (Freeman said it wasn’t a premeditated celebration, but noted with a laugh that “my dad said I used to do that on my brothers in the backyard.”) His arm-flexing scream between second and third base was also a spur-of-the-moment reaction, with Freeman only remembering that he wanted to eschew the team’s normal two-handed-wave home run celebration.
“It just wasn’t a waving moment,” he said. “So that’s what came out.”
When Freeman rewatched videos of the sequence with his oldest son, Charlie, this offseason, he said the clips of his reaction were what struck him the most. Looking back, he knew it was a release of emotions after the difficulties of his season. More than that, though, it was his way, he explained, of trying to say thank you to the fans.
“You can never repay that, how people make you feel,” he said. “But it was like a ‘thank you’ for how they’ve treated the Freemans and me. That’s how I’ve actually gone and looked at it the last couple months, as my ‘thank you’ to Los Angeles for how they’ve treated my family.
“It was so hard for me to come to the field after Max got sick. And every time I came, they lifted me up. They lifted my family up. So that’s what I’ve been thinking about the most … They helped me get through that. And I was able to help them have a championship.”
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was once the author of his own legendary October moment, when his stolen base in Game 4 of the 2004 American League Championship Series helped lead the Boston Red Sox to a historic comeback from a three-games-to-none deficit.
The lesson he learned then?
“In sports, people really look towards moments in time,” he said.
And once they happen, he noted, people also never seem to forget.
“In sports, people really look towards moments in time,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, above hugging Freddie Freeman after L.A. had won the World Series.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“A lot of it depends on how everybody treats it afterward,” echoed Gibson, who said he can sometimes still feel awkward about how his 1988 home run overshadowed contributions from others on that year’s Dodger team, as well as other highlights in his 17-year career. “You have really no way, in my case, of preparing for ultimately how it plays out.”
Freeman could find himself in a similar position. The attention he’s received won’t soon dissipate. If anything, almost regardless of his future contributions, a central piece of his Dodger legacy has already been solidified.
“He’s going to hear it every day, certainly during the baseball season,” Roberts said, “about how someone was grateful or thankful for that moment.”
At the same time, Freeman is trying to reset for the 2025 season, get back to full health while continuing to battle the lingering effects of his October injuries, and help put the Dodgers in position again to create more legendary World Series memories.
“That’s all we’re trying to do, is put ourselves in the best spot to succeed,” Freeman said. “It’s hard for me to think about the bigger picture of a home run when, like now, I’m getting for the next season. So that’s the hard thing. I haven’t really been able to let it sink in.”
Roberts, however, has no concerns about how his veteran first baseman will handle such a dynamic entering the 2025 season.
“He just does a great job of focusing on the job at hand,” Roberts said, “and certainly having the gratitude — that appreciation — for what that moment did for many, many Dodger fans across the world.”
That’s why, while Freeman remains somewhat wary of the public spotlight, he has happily embraced all of his personal interactions with fans. Through them, he has felt the tangible impacts his grand slam created. Through them, he has started to realize his own emotional response to it as well.
“Obviously, the rings and the championships, that’s what we’re going for,” Freeman said. “But to be able to impact the lives that we’ve been able to do in 2024, that’s why you play sports. To be able to give someone that was special.”