There was a blissful innocence in Cody Bellinger’s magnificent ascent to the top of the baseball universe.
How could he have known at the time that it couldn’t get any better?
‘‘I was just doing it,’’ he says, ‘‘just showing up and doing it, focusing on the next day, trying to be the best. I didn’t feel a lot of emotion toward it — and I definitely didn’t understand how amazing it was.’’
Not as he swatted his way with the Dodgers to a unanimous selection as 2017 National League Rookie of the Year, nor as he followed that up by winning NL Championship Series MVP honors and playing in his first World Series in 2018, nor even as the lefty-hitting center fielder put himself on the short list of the best players in the big leagues in 2019 by winning Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards to go with his first NL MVP trophy.
Bellinger was great and was winning all the time, and there didn’t really seem to be anything more to it than that. Right from the beginning, he had been brilliant, packing multihomer games and his first grand slam into his opening two weeks in Los Angeles. He later became the fastest major-leaguer to get to four multihomer games (he did it in 45 games) and tied for the fastest to 20 homers (in 51).
There were so many memorable, storybook blasts, from the first pair of his career — two innings apart against the Phillies in 2017 — to the Game 7 go-ahead shots in the 2018 NLCS against the Brewers and the 2020 NLCS against the Braves, the latter of which led to the Dodgers’ first World Series triumph in 32 years.
What did it all feel like? Can Bellinger find words to describe the sensation of connecting perfectly with a baseball and doing it, for a few years, as often and spectacularly as anyone on the planet?
‘‘Amazing,’’ he says. ‘‘You feel like you’re the man. You feel on top of the world. You feel confident, cocky, arrogant. You don’t even feel the ball off the bat. It just goes.’’
The next time he lifts off, it’ll be for the Cubs.
‘‘It would be a beautiful thing to do it in a Cubs uniform at Wrigley Field,’’ he says, ‘‘and I’m looking forward to it and excited to be here.’’
But he shouldn’t even be in Chicago because, well, who possibly could have envisioned the wheels coming off? Bellinger was supposed to be the next great Dodger and, entering the 2020 season, was so far along that path that MLB Network listed him at No. 3 — behind Mike Trout and Christian Yelich and one spot ahead of brand-new teammate Mookie Betts — on its annual Top 100 Players Right Now list. A year later, he was still in the top 10.
His tumble since then might turn into a windfall for the Cubs, who signed him in the offseason for one year at $17.5 million. Or Bellinger might continue to face-plant as a hitter, a trend that began to appear in the pandemic-shortened 2020 regular season and grew into an albatross in 2021, when he hit .165 with a .542 OPS in an injury-limited 95 games. The numbers improved only slightly to .210 with a .654 OPS in 144 games last season, by the end of which the Dodgers had decided he no longer was worthy of more than a platoon role.
They non-tendered him in November despite having a year of club control remaining, a move that was somewhat surprising but also understandable, given how vigorously the Dodgers are in the World Series-winning business. But it’s still a heck of a mouthful: At only 27, Cody flippin’ Bellinger got kicked to the curb.
He hesitates to talk much about the injuries that waylaid him for fear of coming across as taking ‘‘a safe way out, even if it’s true.’’ And it is true. After his Game 7 homer in the 2020 NLCS, he dislocated his oft-banged-up right shoulder bashing forearms with a teammate and, though he played in the World Series, required offseason surgery. The shoulder was slow to heal and barked at him from start to finish in 2021, a debacle that included a fracture in his left leg early and cracked ribs late. Pain and discomfort were his constant companions.
‘‘Everybody knows about his shoulder, but I think when he broke his leg, it set him back a lot,’’ former teammate Max Muncy said. ‘‘He spent a lot of time just trying to get strong and healthy again, and eventually there was a little pressure there. He was Rookie of the Year and then MVP, right? There was so much expected of him, and of course he wanted to live up to it.’’
Muncy foresees the combination of being healthy and having a change of scenery as being good for Bellinger, and Betts agrees. But what Betts wants to emphasize more is that Bellinger was ‘‘the best teammate you could ask for,’’ even as he struggled.
‘‘He was great,’’ Betts says. ‘‘He worked every day and never got down, never pouted, never did anything negative, always showed up to the park smiling. He always put in the work. Sometimes the results don’t come. I think all he’s got to do is keep doing the same thing, and eventually it’ll turn — which will be awesome. But no matter what happens, I think he has handled it perfectly. I’m proud of him for that.’’
All along, Bellinger believed he eventually would come around in 2022. He just never quite got things unlocked.
‘‘I always thought, ‘This day is the day I’m coming out of it, this is it, I got it,’ ’’ he says. ‘‘Then the game comes, and it’s a difficult [expletive] game. So just keep moving forward, keep scrapping.
‘‘I just know I’m better than what I’ve been doing, and I think I have a great opportunity here.’’
On some level, Bellinger knows he should be thankful for having an opportunity in the big leagues at all. He is, after all, Clay’s son, and Clay Bellinger spent 10 years in the minor leagues before at last reaching the majors with the Yankees in 1999. Clay won two World Series rings in the Bronx, but there were Bombers with more talent in their fingertips than he had in his whole body. A utility player who manned every position except catcher, he started all of 83 games in his career, collecting 311 at-bats, 60 hits, 12 home runs and 35 runs driven in and batting a not-so-robust .193.
In case that stat line doesn’t speak for itself, consider that the younger Bellinger tore out of the gates in 2019 with 47 hits, 14 homers and 37 RBI by the end of April.
But Bellinger was too young at the time to appreciate the extent to which his dad had to work and wait and hang in there and all that before eventually reaching the position of desperately trying to stay viable with the best team in baseball, knowing that any game could be his last.
‘‘Looking back,’’ Bellinger says, ‘‘it’s very impressive because not only was he in the minor leagues for so long and waiting for his opportunity, but he was also raising kids. Raising kids, trying to make it to the big leagues, trying to support our family — him and my mom — so I just appreciate the grind he did and knowing how unattractive that is. And I think I’ve been able to connect with him more, just knowing the struggle he had to go through. And, obviously, it hasn’t been all roses and gold at the end of the rainbow for me, either.
‘‘But I look at it as everyone’s life and career goes through peaks and valleys. There’s a long road ahead for me in this game. That’s what I look forward to — the future, the next 10, 15 years I get to play this game.’’
All told, it has been a pretty darn good baseball ride for Bellinger to this point, starting with having a big-leaguer at home to look up to. He got to play in the 2007 Little League World Series, with Clay coaching. He turned pro at 17. His career in L.A. led him to his partner, model Chase Carter, and brought him a daughter, Caiden, born in November 2021.
Caiden has a way of making everything better. So does Junior, Bellinger’s Doberman.
‘‘They don’t know anything other than just loving you,’’ he says.
Bellinger hopes he’s done beating up his body. And he hopes he’s done beating himself up for not being at the top of the baseball universe. He doesn’t do that so much nowadays, but, look, this has been awfully hard.
‘‘I just want to say that I know the type of player that I am and the type of talent that I am, and I envision myself portraying that again,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s a process; it doesn’t come overnight. But it will come back again, and someday I’ll be able to look back on all of it and just know that I did everything I could.’’
