Freddie Freeman is returning to his family roots when the Los Angeles Dodgers open defense of their World Series championship against the Blue Jays in Toronto on Friday.
The All-Star first baseman’s parents are from the province of Ontario; father Fred is from Windsor and late mother Rosemary was from Peterborough, about 85 miles northwest of Toronto.
“Every time I go back there,” Freeman said, “I feel a little bit closer to my mom.”
Freeman was born in the Orange County city of Fountain Valley after his family relocated to California because of his father’s work.
He was 10 when his 47-year-old mother died of melanoma – the most dangerous type of skin cancer because of its ability to spread to organs – in 2000. The All-Star first baseman wears long sleeves under his jersey during games as a silent tribute to her as well as to protect himself from the cancer that runs in the family.
“I’d rather be hot for a few hours than go through chemotherapy,” he told ESPN in 2023.
Freeman holds dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship, and he chose to play for his mother’s home country in the World Baseball Classic in 2023 and 2017.
“I was 8 years old and we were at an Angels game,” Freeman told ESPN. “I was eating popcorn and the Canadian national anthem is playing and I’m sitting. (Then) it felt like someone just ripped me up. It felt like I was just hanging and it was my mom (who pulled me out of my seat). It’s those little things that I remember.”
There’s usually an envelope waiting in Freeman’s locker in Toronto, too.
“It’s always like a third cousin has found photos in their garage and they bring them to me,” he said.
Freeman’s father will be on hand at Rogers Centre for Game 1, just as he was last year at Dodger Stadium. That’s when the younger Freeman gave his dad and Dodger fans a lifelong memory, belting a walk-off grand slam in the Series opener.
A jubilant Freeman ran over to find his dad in the front row and they touched through the protective netting. He was chosen Series MVP after the Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees for their eighth world title.
Freeman carried the Dodgers last fall, especially against the Yankees. His struggles in these playoffs have been offset by outstanding starting pitching. He’s batting .231 with one home run and five RBIs in nine postseason games. His 11 strikeouts in 39 at-bats are higher than his playoff career average.
“He’s certainly seeing some really good pitching,” manager Dave Roberts said. “He’s certainly not pleased with performance up to this point, but every time he gets in the box, I feel good. I expect him to really have a nice Series.”
The Dodgers are back in the World Series for the fifth time in nine years. The Blue Jays are appearing for the first time since winning back-to-back titles in 1992 and ’93.
“When you have a whole country that’s behind one team, that’s pretty amazing,” Freeman said. “To just see the city come together and get to experience so much jubilation, it’s an exciting time.”
Freeman was a favorite among Canadian fans during his WBC appearances.
“I’m not so sure the Blue Jays fans will be cheering for me this time around,” he said.
Dodgers in midst of possible dynasty
Toronto – Baseball could be in the midst of a Dodgers dynasty, a much-debated word reserved for teams achieving sweeping success.
By beating Toronto in the World Series that starts Friday night, Los Angeles would capture its third title in six years.
“Just winning one is hard,” Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “If you can get three in a matter of five, six years, I guess you could say it is one. But I think it’s the sustained winning that the Dodgers have done for so long and then obviously to cement it with some championships, I think, yeah, I guess you can call this if we do it a modern-day dynasty.”
Baseball has no widely accepted definition.
Most give pantheon status to the 1949-53 New York Yankees (five straight titles), the 1936-39 Yankees (four), the 1972-74 Oakland Athletics (three) and the 1998-2000 Yankees (three) – the last team to win consecutive championships. The Dodgers are the first defending champion to reach the World Series since the 2009 Philadelphia Phillies.
“If I was broadcasting, I would not refer to them as a dynasty,” Emmy-winning commentator Bob Costas said. “You can compare them to the Braves who won 14 divisions in a row but got to the World Series five times and lost it four of those five times.”
Yet he is willing to consider using the word because times have changed. The Dodgers have won 12 of the last 13 NL West titles and had 106 victories the year they finished second.
“There has to be lines of demarcation once you go to wild cards and then especially once you expand the playoffs as they’ve now been expanded,” Costas said. “If you were really the best team over 162 or 154 (games) back in the day and you proved you were the best team, now you just got to win four out of seven.”
Mookie Betts, who has been with the Dodgers since 2020, said he’s more concerned about preparing for games than contemplating the team’s historical place.
“If you’re thinking about going to the postseason and obviously having a chance to win World Serieses year after year, I guess that would kind of qualify as some type of dynasty, but I don’t know what it takes to call it that,” he said.
Since the expansion era started, the only consecutive titles have been won by the 1961-62 Yankees, the mid-70s A’s, the 1975-76 Cincinnati Reds, the 1977-78 Yankees, the 1992-93 Toronto Blue Jays and the late-century Yankees.
Earlier back-to-back titles also were won by the 1907-08 Chicago Cubs, 1910-11 Philadelphia A’s, 1915-16 Red Sox, 1921-22 New York Giants, 1927-28 Yankees and 1929-30 A’s.
John Thorn, Major League Baseball’s official historian, thinks sustained success is sufficient to earn the dynasty honorific, even if every year didn’t result in a title.
“I think a dynasty is today defined by consecutive pennants or division titles won, not by World Series championships,” he wrote in an email. “So I think the Atlanta Braves of recent years, the Detroit Tigers of 1907-09, or the Giants of 1911-1913, are in. Three straight WS appearances, rather than three straight titles, does it for me.”
Los Angeles won the title during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and that year’s expanded playoffs, then beat the Yankees in a five-game Series last year. Winning this year would for some make them comparable to the Yankees, who won four in seven years from 1956-62, and the Dodgers, who took three in seven seasons from 1959-65.
Teams with three titles in a four- or five-year span include the 1910-13 Philadelphia Athletics, the 1915-18 Boston Red Sox, the 1942-46 St. Louis Cardinals and the 2010-14 San Francisco Giants.
“It just kind of puts us on a Mount Rushmore of sports organizations,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “The legacy, dynasty talk, a lot of that I feel is is meant for other people that aren’t playing, and let them have those debates, where it’s our job to kind of put those topics on the table.”
Betts considers each championship a boost toward the sport’s highest individual accomplishment.
“Obviously my end goal and the goal of probably everyone is to be in the Hall of Fame one day, and so I think that definitely helps the case,” he said.
Giants gamble on college coach as manager
The San Francisco Giants have hired Tennessee Volunteers coach Tony Vitello as manager for his first pro coaching job.
San Francisco announced the move Wednesday, an unprecedented gamble by president of baseball operations Buster Posey on a coach with no pro experience. The 47-year-old Vitello is making the jump after spending his entire career at the college level.
“Tony is one of the brightest, most innovative and most respected coaches in college baseball today,” Posey said. “Throughout our search, Tony’s leadership, competitiveness and commitment to developing players stood out.”
Posey said the Giants look forward to the energy and direction Vitello brings with his passion for baseball aligning with the club’s values.
“I’m incredibly honored and grateful for this opportunity,” Vitello said in the Giants’ announcement. “I’m excited to lead this group of players and represent the San Francisco Giants. I can’t wait to get started and work to establish a culture that makes Giants’ faithful proud.”
Vitello has guided the Volunteers to regular success in the Southeastern Conference since being hired in June 2017. That included leading the program to its first NCAA title last year to go with six regional appearances, five NCAA super regional berths and three College World Series trips.
He has had 10 players from Tennessee selected in the first round and 52 Vols overall in MLB’s amateur draft. That includes Giants outfielder Drew Gilbert.
Seeking a new voice and direction after the Giants missed the playoffs for a fourth straight year, Posey said he wouldn’t rule out anyone in his search for someone with what he called an “obsessive” work ethic and attention to detail.
Posey had also considered his former backup catcher Nick Hundley, who has been working as a special assistant to Texas Rangers general manager Chris Young.
Instead, Posey is taking a route once tapped by the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys with Miami Hurricanes coach Jimmy Johnson in 1989. That worked out with Johnson winning two Super Bowl trophies in 1992 and 1993 in a Hall of Fame career.
Posey is striving for stability at manager after so much turnover for the franchise in recent years, including Posey taking over as President of Baseball Operations last fall when Farhan Zaidi was fired.
The Giants dismissed manager Bob Melvin after two years, and Posey quickly ruled out beloved longtime Giants skipper Bruce Bochy as an option to replace him once Bochy parted ways with Texas following a three-year managerial stint.
The Giants finished 81-81 for one more victory than in Melvin’s first year. They haven’t reached the postseason since winning the NL West with a franchise-record 107 victories to edge the rival Dodgers by one game in 2021 under then-skipper Gabe Kapler.
San Francisco is getting a colorful and brash manager in Vitello.
The NCAA suspended Vitello twice during his Tennessee tenure, first for spending too much time arguing a call in 2018. During that two-game suspension, he raised money for charity with a pizza and lemonade stand while the Vols played.
Chest-bumping an umpire in 2022 led to a four-game suspension, and Vitello spent that time working with a Tennessee fraternity offering a chest bump to anyone donating $2 to the Wounded Warriors Project.
Vitello isn’t a stranger to Northern California. In 2002, he was associate head coach of the Salinas Packers in the California Collegiate League. The team went 50-14 and reached the National Baseball Congress World Series in Wichita, Kansas.
He played three seasons at Missouri as an infielder and began his coaching career there before stints at TCU and Arkansas, the last where he was hitting coach.
A native of St. Louis, Vitello went 341–131 at Tennessee. In his second season in 2019, he led the Vols to their first NCAA berth since 2005. Vitello then led the Vols to their first national title in baseball, winning the 2024 College World Series.
Tennessee has reached the College World Series three times with Vitello. He has two Southeastern Conference regular-season titles and a pair of SEC Tournament titles, the last in 2024. Tennessee is finishing up an expansion and renovation of the baseball stadium to meet interest in the program.
Vitello was earning $3 million a year and signed a five-year extension in 2024 that includes a $3 million buyout.
The Tennessee athletic director Danny White congratulated Vitello on the job and said university officials are focused on players and the coaching staff in an “evolving process” while they finalize the next steps.
“We are committed to continuously investing in the program at a championship level across all areas,” White said. “Furthermore, the upcoming $109 million renovation of Lindsey Nelson Stadium will transform it into one of the premier baseball venues.”
World SeriesBlue Jays vs. Dodgers
(Best-of-7, all games on FOX)
Friday, Oct. 24: at Toronto, 8
Saturday, Oct. 25: at Toronto, 8
Monday, Oct. 27: at Los Angeles, 8
Tuesday, Oct. 28: at Los Angeles, 8
x-Wednesday, Oct. 29: at Los Angeles, 8
x-Friday, Oct. 31: at Toronto, 8
x-Saturday, Nov. 1: at Toronto, 8
x-If necessary
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