TORONTO — Before the wild celebration to punctuate last year’s World Series, Freddie Freeman found himself waiting in the visiting manager’s office at Rogers Centre. Though the Los Angeles Dodgers’ bacchanal was set to begin, Freeman first needed to bestow something important upon its rightful owner.

He had fielded Mookie Betts’ throw on the final out of a seemingly endless Game 7. As his teammates emptied their lungs for the team’s third title in six seasons, Freeman stashed away the baseball, the same one he would later present to manager Dave Roberts.

“It just blew me away,” Roberts told The Athletic on Monday, when he was back in the visiting manager’s office in Toronto for the first time since that night. “It’s one of the biggest honors I’ve ever received.”

It never really belonged anywhere else, Freeman explained after the Dodgers’ 14-2 victory over the Blue Jays that bore no resemblance to the dramatic Game 7 here last fall.

“He’s the head,” Freeman told The Athletic, speaking of Roberts. “He makes everything stay calm, stay smooth, run on the right tracks around here. I feel like he deserves it. When we win a championship, he’s the man that runs the show, and I feel he deserves the ball.”

Of course Freeman was at the center of things. He has served as one of his manager’s most trusted voices during this golden era. The two have become unmistakably close. Still, early last November, when Roberts returned to the visiting office at the Rogers Centre some 20 minutes after the Dodgers’ title-clinching 5-4 victory in 11 innings, he wasn’t expecting Freeman to be in there.

But Freeman is well-rehearsed when it comes to World Series endings. He knew the drill. When Freeman’s Atlanta Braves toppled the Houston Astros in 2021, he presented manager Brian Snitker with the baseball. When the 2024 World Series ended with a Walker Buehler strikeout of the New York Yankees’ Alex Verdugo, catcher Will Smith kept the ball; Buehler and Smith put it up for auction, fetching $414,000 for victims of the wildfires in Los Angeles earlier that year.

And this time, Freeman caught Betts’ throw to secure back-to-back titles and knew it belonged in Roberts’ trophy case, not his.

“To be the head of an organization, the face of it,” he said, “answering questions when things aren’t going right, and he does it with class. We obviously love him and trust him. I feel like when you win a championship, to have that last out ball, it should be in the manager’s hands.”

Freeman’s faith in Roberts has been echoed throughout the room. When describing the clubhouse culture that has fostered baseball’s first repeat championship in 25 years, Roberts pointed to the Dodgers’ acquisition of Freeman in 2022 as a turning point, largely because he set a ton of trust between players and staff.

That’s why receiving the memento hit Roberts so hard.

“Coming from him, and him recognizing my part in this — I’m telling you, that’s from the heart,” he said. “You do this thing for the respect of the players. And for him to recognize me in that vein and present that to me was just … I’m stumbling to try to find words for it.”

The Dodgers won it all in 2024 despite a ravaged rotation. They won in 2025 with a patchwork bullpen, needing to rally from down 3-2 in the World Series and from down 3-0 in Game 7 to come back and win. The tying blow last fall came in the ninth inning when Miguel Rojas — who hadn’t started in 26 games until Roberts inserted him into the lineup for Game 6 — swatted a slider from Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman into the seats with one out. Two innings later, Smith put the Dodgers ahead for good with a solo shot off Shane Bieber.

By the bottom of the 11th, Betts was firing the series-ending out in Freeman’s direction. The Dodgers never panicked.

Roberts has won four World Series titles between his time as a player and a manager. His .622 winning percentage is the highest for any American or National League manager ever. The last two titles have all but cemented a Hall of Fame legacy as he’s early in his 11th season at the helm in Los Angeles.

For as much as the journey is meaningful, the World Series jewelry provides flash he doesn’t like to bring upon himself.

But the baseball is safely tucked away now.

“In a special place,” Roberts said.