LOS ANGELES (AP) — Charlie Freeman had to watch one of his father’s most important home runs on a replay.
“Charlie said he missed it. I don’t know what he was doing in the family room, but he said he missed it,” Freddie Freeman said Wednesday, two days after his lifted the Los Angeles Dodgers to a 6-5 win over the Toronto Blue Jays in World Series Game 3.
Charlie, who turned 9 in September, is a fixture around the Dodgers. He has his own locker with a personalized nameplate adjacent to his dad’s stall in the clubhouse that was renovated last winter.
Freddie said Charlie, 4-year-old Brandon and 3-year-old Maximus all stayed awake for the 18th inning. Freeman hit the home run off Brendon Little at 11:50 p.m. PDT, ending a game that matched the longest by innings in World Series history.
“He said he heard a cheer and looked at the TV and I was running around the bases,” Freddie said, “so I guess he asked my wife to watch the replay.”
Clayton Kershaw also has an adjacent clubhouse stall for his four children, who range in age from 3 to 10.
“You got to convince the wives and feel comfortable with the kids around at times, and I think we do as good a job as anybody just trying to make people feel welcome and be themselves,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “So, yeah, that’s definitely part of the calculus.”
Seeking to become the first repeat champion since the 1998-2000 New York Yankees, Los Angeles has tried to create an atmosphere that attracts free agents. In the last four years, the Dodgers have signed Freeman, Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Roki Sasaki, Blake Snell and Teoscar Hernández.
“Probably our largest kind of focal point and biggest goal was to try to create a destination spot where our own players didn’t want to leave and where players from other teams wanted to come,” Dodgers president of operations Andrew Friedman said.
Freeman became the first player to hit two World Series walk-off homers. His 10th-inning grand slam against the New York Yankees’ Nestor Cortes gave the Dodgers a 6-3 win in last year’s opener, starting Los Angeles to a five-game Series victory.
Only one other player has had two World Series walk-off hits, Hall of Famer Goose Goslin. His 12th-inning single gave Detroit a 3-2 win over St. Louis in Game 2 of 1934 and his ninth-inning single in 1935 gave the Tigers a 4-3 win over the Chicago Cubs, finishing a six-game Series.
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