The baseball soared into the Los Angeles night, traveling back, back, back …
… and was caught at the wall in center field.
“Dang,” Freddie Freeman later recalled saying to himself.
The eighth-inning flyout on Saturday night marked the fifth time Freeman drove a ball to the warning track in the Dodgers’ three-game sweep of the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Not one of them cleared the fence at Uniqlo Field.
The 36-year-old Freeman was probably a combined 20 feet from leading the major leagues in home runs, but he could afford to laugh at his series of near misses, especially after collecting his first three hits of the season in the series finale.
“I feel good,” he said.
And he looks like it, so much so that maybe he really can be the Dodgers’ first baseman through his age-40 season.
That dream scenario was presented in spring training by Freeman who said that a) he wanted to retire a Dodger and b) he wanted to play three more seasons after this one.
I was skeptical.
Playing in the major leagues as a 40-year old is difficult enough. Playing a premium offensive position in the major leagues as a 40-year-old for a team expected to win a World Series is borderline impossible.
Freeman finished third in the NL in batting last year, but he was hitting fewer line drives and striking out more. He didn’t move well on defense and was extremely limited on the basepaths. Sure, he was coming back from offseason ankle surgery, but every athlete reaches an age at which something is always physically wrong.
He seemed to be at that point.
Except Freeman is now playing as if he’s bathing every night in the Fountain of Youth for which Juan Ponce de Leon searched in vain.
Through the Diamondbacks series, Freeman was leading the major leagues in hard-hit balls, or batted balls with exit velocities of 95 mph or faster. He was moving around better on defense.
The future Hall of Famer who looked to be on his last legs could very well have another three or four All-Star seasons in him.
“When you feel good, you feel healthy, you have a free mind to play,” Freeman said.
Freeman divulged he was even more banged up last season than he let on.
He underwent an ankle operation a month after the 2024 World Series and spent the remainder of the winter rehabilitating rather than working out.
“I wasn’t able to work out my lower half last year,” he said.
No deadlifts. No lunges.
“It was all trying to strengthen my ankle and calf,” he said.
He barely even hit.
Freeman previously said that he didn’t start hitting until the day before the team’s annual fan fest, and even that was misleading. He said he made it a point to do so because he knew he would be asked at the event if he had started swinging a bat.
“I didn’t want to say no,” he said, “so that’s why I forced it.”
His ankle remained a problem for the majority of last season. Before every game, he received three hours of treatment. When he was on the field, he was discouraged, if not outright forbidden, from stealing bases.
“I would say it was a different animal to tackle last year,” Freeman said. “I was fighting through a lot of stuff. I was trying to win every day.
“That’s why I loved everything that happened last year. I had to fight so hard. I know I wasn’t that great on the glove side of the ball, but I was still fighting, trying to get out there every day. Everybody in here knows what I was trying to do to get out there. I’m proud of the fact that I was able to be out there as much as I was and still perform.”
He finished with a .295 average, 24 homers and 90 runs batted in. Smiling, he joked, “Not up to your expectations, but still good enough.”
In the wake of that experience, Freeman knew better than to panic after his 0-fers in the first couple of games of the season. He was making solid contact. He was no longer wondering if he could even get into his stance. His feet were under him, giving him the power he displayed in his first couple of seasons with the Dodgers.
Not every out is the same, Freeman said.
“Just last couple games, I was hitting the ball hard,” he said. “I was in a good spot. I was swinging at strikes, not swinging at balls.
“When you have the last two games, where you’re hitting the ball hard, you’re like, ‘OK, don’t do anything different, stay stubborn.’ Because sometimes when you’re not getting hits, you want to tinker, like, ‘Well, I’m catching the ball a little too late, let’s try to get out front.’ The next thing you know, you’re too out in front on offspeed and you’re sending yourself down a hole. So I was like, ‘Don’t do anything different.’”
He was rewarded for his patience on Saturday. He singled in the second inning and again in the fourth. His double in the sixth inning drove in Kyle Tucker for the Dodgers’ first run, which set the stage for the 3-2 comeback victory.
“All the work pregame is just getting ready for the game technique-wise and getting your swing right,” he said.
MLB Photos via Getty Images
Freeman pointed to a diving stop he made on a sharp grounder by Geraldo Perdomo in the first inning on Saturday. On the play in question, the ball bounced to Tyler Glasnow, but Freeman was able to get up and cover first base in time to receive the pitcher’s throw.
“There was no way I could have done that last year,” he said.
Whenever the Dodgers win a series, they celebrate with a round of tequila shots.
A known oenophile, Freeman instead joins the toast with a small pour of wine in a coffee cup. Because he sips only an ounce or two at a time, he’s able to make a bottle stretch out for weeks, or even months, by using a Coravin preservation system.
His current bottle: a 2015 Château Cheval Blanc.
The full-bodied Bordeaux is dense, still very much in its primary stage. The wine has many years ahead of it.
Freeman looks like he might too.