The Dodgers have plenty of superstars, including the game’s biggest international phenomenon, Shohei Ohtani. But it was first baseman Freddie Freeman’s historic World Series performance that carried LA, as the Dodgers came back from a five-run deficit in Game 5 to take the series, four games to one.
Sportico reports Dodgers part-owner owner Magic Johnson summed up the club’s eighth World Series victory—and Freeman’s role in it: When superstars play like superstars, the basketball Hall of Famer said, that’s how you win.
“He was Michael Jordan, he was Larry Bird, he was Kobe Bryant,” Johnson said of Freeman, in an interview on the Yankee Stadium field after the Dodgers won the World Series over the New York Yankees with a 7-6 victory in Game 5.
Johnson didn’t hesitate to put Freeman in elite championship company with Jordan, Bird and Bryant. “That’s who I compare him with,” Johnson said. “It was that level of dominance on the biggest stage, the championship round. Those guys all did it. I had never seen a baseball guy do it like this.”
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Named World Series MVP after setting a home run record, Freeman overcame an at-times debilitating high right ankle sprain. It was in the middle of Wednesday’s comeback, providing a key two-run single in the Dodgers’ five-run fifth inning—helped along by Yankees defensive lapses—that put them back in the game.
The pre-World Series hype focused on Yankees star Aaron Judge and Ohtani. Their big-dollar free agent signings dominated the headlines the past two off-seasons. But Judge will be remembered in this series for a dropped fly ball that ignited the Dodgers Game 5 comeback, and Ohtani injured his left shoulder sliding into second in Game 3 and was never a factor.
Instead, it was two prior superstar acquisitions that made the difference for the Dodgers: the free agent signing of Freeman in 2022 and the trade for Mookie Betts in 2020.
“It felt like nothing. I was just floating,” Freeman said when asked to describe the sensation of hitting the first walk-off grand slam the World Series had ever seen.
Freeman’s historic exclamation point on Game 1 of this year’s series between his Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees was an all-time highlight by itself — “as good as it gets,” Freeman said afterward.
“It might be the greatest baseball moment I’ve ever witnessed,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. “And I’ve witnessed some great ones.”
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