NEW YORK—Amid the din of a triumphant Los Angeles Dodgers celebration in Yankee Stadium, LA minority owner Magic Johnson summed up the club’s eighth World Series victory—and Freddie 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.
The Dodgers have plenty of superstars, including the game’s biggest international phenomenon and likely regular-season MVP, Shohei Ohtani. But it was 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.
Freeman, the Dodgers first baseman, overcame an at-times debilitating high right ankle sprain and was the obvious World Series MVP, with four homers and a record-tying 12 RBIs in the five games. And he 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.
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.”
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.
The Boston Red Sox decided they weren’t going to keep Betts and swapped him to the Dodgers for three players. The Dodgers subsequently signed him for 12 years, $365 million.
The Atlanta Braves had won the 2021 World Series over the Houston Astros with Freeman as the MVP. He wanted to stay, asking for a six-year deal, but the Braves offered him only five years. The Dodgers stepped into the breach and signed him for those six years at $162 million.
“We never thought we were going to get Freddie,” Johnson said. “Everybody thought he was going to sign back. When it was apparent that he wasn’t, [owner] Mark [Walter] said, ‘Let’s go get him.’”
The Dodgers have now won the World Series twice with Betts on the roster, the first time in 2020 over the Tampa Bay Rays. Betts made key plays throughout this series with his glove and bat, and with his legs. In the fifth inning, he hustled down the line on a weak, two-out ground ball to first baseman Anthony Rizzo, earning an infield hit and an RBI when Yankees starter Gerrit Cole didn’t cover first base. In the eighth, Betts drove in the winning run with a sacrifice fly.
Freeman’s impact was even bigger. He set the tone for the series with his walk-off 10th inning grand slam to win Game 1. And he followed it with homers in each of the next three games. On Wednesday night, right after Betts’ infield hit in the fifth, Freeman came to the plate against Cole, the Yankees ace who had been unhittable for the first four innings. Freeman delivered a line-drive single to center to bring home two runs.
“To come through in these situations, that’s what you dream about as a kid, doing that in the World Series,” Freeman said. “It’s hard to talk about right now, but maybe in a few days when I’ve let it settle in, I’ll have better answers for you. Right now, I’m just ecstatic.”
The Dodgers had four days off between the end of their National League Championship Series win in six games over the Mets, giving Freeman a chance to recuperate from the ankle injury. He missed two of the final three games of the NLCS.
“I did a lot of work in between the NLCS and the World Series,” he said. “Thankfully, my ankle got into a good spot where I could work on my swing.”
Johnson, a consummate superstar with the Lakers, pointed to Freeman’s multiple contributions to the Dodgers clubhouse culture.
“It’s not just hitting home runs and doing what Freddie does on the field,” Johnson said. “He’s been a leader in the locker room and leads by example. He also helps the guys in terms of their own hitting. They give him a lot of credit for their approach. Mookie talks about that all the time.”
When Mark Walter and Guggenheim Baseball Management purchased the Dodgers out of bankruptcy from Frank McCourt in 2012 for $2.15 billion, Johnson bought a 2.3% stake in the team. He wanted to help bring the Dodgers back to the days of the 1970s and 1980s when they regularly went to the World Series. They’ve gone four times since the Walter purchase. The 2020 title was the first for the Dodgers since 1988, but because of the pandemic there wasn’t a parade in downtown LA.
There will be one now, thanks in no small part to Freeman. “I can’t wait to see the millions of people out there,” Johnson said. “I finally get to celebrate us winning it.”
