Thirty-six years and 10 days after the most iconic World Series home run in franchise history, the Los Angeles Dodgers finally delivered the sequel.
This one followed all the rules of any great Hollywood sequel: Bigger. Grander. A higher budget. And, of course, more dramatic.
Stepping to the plate with two outs, the bases loaded and his team trailing 3–2, Freddie Freeman entered his name into the Dodgers’ lengthy October lore with a walk-off grand slam to give Los Angeles a 6–3 win over the New York Yankees in Game 1 of the World Series.
Freeman, who’s still recovering from a sprained ankle, didn’t have quite the pronounced limp that Kirk Gibson did in 1988 when he stepped to the plate in the game’s climactic moment. But the end result was just as pronounced—just as thrilling—as his predecessor’s. It was the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history, and it came when his team was one out away from falling in an 0–1 hole and surrendering home field advantage.
Instead, with one swing no one who saw it will ever forget, Freeman flipped the script.
Here are six takeaways from a wild Game 1.
Freeman steals the show
In the buildup to the most anticipated World Series in years (decades?), most of the talk centered around Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Mookie Betts and Giancarlo Stanton. Freeman, a former MVP himself, was listed lower on the casting sheet, in large part because he was playing through an ankle sprain suffered just before the start of the postseason that has clearly hampered him in October. He missed two of the Dodgers’ final three games in the National League championship series, and prior to Friday had gone 7-for-32 (.219) during the playoffs with no extra-base hits.
He snapped his extra-base hit drought with a triple in the first inning but was hitless after that leading up to his at-bat in the 10th. With first base open and two outs, the Yankees intentionally walked Betts to load the bases and bring up Freeman against lefty Nestor Cortes. Freeman jumped on the first pitch he saw, launching it 423 feet into the right field stands to seal himself in October amber forever.
"Just kind of floating," Freeman said of what his trot around the bases felt like. "Those are the kind of things, when you're 5 years old with your two older brothers and you're playing wiffle ball in the backyard, those are the scenarios you dream about, two outs, bases loaded in a World Series game.
"For it to actually happen and get a home run and walk it off to give us a 1–0 lead, that's as good as it gets right there."
It was a magical moment for a player who, one day, should have a strong case at making the Hall of Fame. If and when that day comes, Friday’s heroics will be mentioned in his first paragraph.
Cole shows aces still matter
So much talk has been centered around how the days of workhorse starting pitchers going deep in postseason games were gone, and how the bullpens for each of these clubs would truly be where each game swung.
In his Yankees World Series debut, Cole offered a reminder that aces aren’t a dying breed just yet.
The reigning American League Cy Young Award winner pitched into the seventh inning, giving up one run on four hits with no walks and four strikeouts. He retired 11 straight batters at one point and kept his pitch count down, saving his best for the diciest part of his night in the bottom of the sixth.
After Tommy Edman led off the inning with a double, manager Aaron Boone opted to leave Cole in to face the fearsome top of the Dodgers’ order a third time. Cole bore down and induced groundouts from Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts, then got Freddie Freeman to fly out and escape the threat unscathed.
Even though Cole was only at 70 pitches following Edman’s double, many managers would have turned to the bullpen in such a high-leverage spot. In Game 1 of the American League Division Series against the Kansas City Royals, Boone pulled Cole at just 80 pitches after he gave up a leadoff single in the sixth inning in which the Yankees held a one-run lead.
But on Friday, with Cole on cruise control for most of the night, Boone trusted his ace to escape the jam. Cole rewarded his manager for his faith, and took some heat off New York’s bullpen in the process.
Stanton makes history (again)
October means one thing and one thing only: Giancarlo Stanton will mash.
The much-maligned (at least on the back pages of most New York outlets) slugger has carried his near-annual metamorphosis into a right-handed hitting Barry Bonds into the Fall Classic. He has now homered in four consecutive games, each more majestic than the last.
Giancarlo with a NO-DOUBTER 😱
— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) October 26, 2024
(via @Yankees) pic.twitter.com/LR3G44D4CK
Stanton is now the only player in postseason history to have multiple streaks of homering in four or more straight games (he had five straight games with a home run during the 2020 playoffs). His last five hits have all cleared the wall, something he’s done once before during the playoffs (he’s the only player to accomplish this more than once).
Soto’s defensive miscues prove costly
Soto is a generational hitting talent and is set for an offseason payday north of half a billion dollars. But despite his status as a Gold Glove finalist, his defense cost the Yankees on Friday.
In the fifth inning, Soto misjudged a fly ball from Kiké Hernández and turned what was most likely only a double into a triple, leading to the Dodgers’ first run of the night on a Will Smith sacrifice fly. Though it would have taken a great throw to nab Hernández on the sac fly, Soto’s throw to the plate bounced twice before reaching catcher Austin Wells.
In the eighth, Ohtani hit a one-out double off the wall in right field. Soto’s throw to second shorthopped Gleyber Torres, ricocheting to a vacant middle of the infield and allowing Ohtani to reach third. He later scored on a sacrifice fly by Mookie Betts.
Shohei Ohtani hits one off the wall for his first World Series hit 💪 pic.twitter.com/gpIjAnVa9x
— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) October 26, 2024
Torres was charged with an error on the play and certainly could have made a better effort to block the ball, but the throw not making it to its target on the fly contributed to the critical miscue. The Yankees will gladly trade subpar defense for the hitting masterclass Soto routinely displays, but small moments like those are costly in tight games like Friday’s, and could continue to plague the Yankees going forward.
Yankees run wild on Will Smith
The Yankees might, in the words of its radio announcer, “run the bases like drunks” sometimes. But perhaps that means they run with the confidence that only alcohol can provide.
They certainly ran free and easy on Friday. Jazz Chisholm Jr. terrorized Los Angeles in the late innings, swiping three bags from the sixth on, including two in the 10th to get in position to score the go-ahead run on a fielder’s choice groundout from Anthony Volpe. Volpe also stole second in the inning to give the Yankees four on the night.
Until Freeman’s heroics, it seemed that the Yankees’ bold base running would prove to be the deciding factor. Perhaps that aggressive approach will carry on through the rest of the series and give the Dodgers an extra element to think about.
Dodgers control the strike zone
The Dodgers torment opposing pitchers by rarely expanding the zone at the plate, and did so to near perfection against the Yankees’ pitchers—particularly their bullpen arms—on Friday.
Cole struck out four hitters on the night, and five Yankees relievers failed to strike anybody out following his exit. Cole managed just nine swinging strikes on 49 swings (18% whiff rate). The bullpen had an even worse time: Clay Holmes, Tommy Kahnle, Luke Weaver, Jake Cousins and Cortes had just one swinging strike between them on 48 combined pitches.
If the Dodgers continue their disciplined approach and remove the swing-and-miss element from New York’s bullpen, they’ll continue to have an edge late in games. In a heavyweight battle of the bullpens, Round 1 went the Dodgers’ way—and dramatically, emphatically, unforgettably so.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as World Series Game 1 Takeaways: Freddie Freeman Pens Hollywood Sequel.
