Freeman: A season from COVID to MVP
The Atlanta Braves’ first baseman from Villa Park had .341 average after fighting through coronavirus.
On the night of July 3, he was the Most Vulnerable Player.
He was one of the young and the strong who, we’re told, couldn’t be stopped by COVID19. But Freddie Freeman, two months short of his 31st birthday, was broiling with a 104.3 degree fever and frozen by unprecedented fear.
That, he said, was the night when he reached up to his Lord and said, “Please don’t take me.”
On Nov. 12, Freeman became the National League’s Most Valuable Player. He also could have won Comeback Player of the Year. He began the season as a shadow of himself and wound up overshadowing the league, as the Braves won the N. L. East for the third consecutive season..
“I was with him at his house in Corona del Mar,” said Fred Freeman, the dad who runs the family accounting business in Villa Park. “Usually they tell you if you’ve won the award or not. This time it didn’t leak out. Freddie’s agent found out and called him and Freddie said, ‘ No, I don’t want to know.’ So he waited 45 minutes. The reaction you saw was genuine and emotional.
“It’s really hard to believe, and I’m his father. I told him after his start that he’d be doing well to hit .290.”
Instead Freeman hit .341. The first baseman was second in the league in batting average, on- base percentage, slugging percentage, on- base percentage
and first in runs and doubles. He hit .423 with men in scoring position.
After 13 games he was hitting .190, but a double and a home run against the Blue Jays got him situated, and fifteen games later he was hitting .302.
Beyond that, Freeman played all 72 regular season and playoff games even though he had more reason to opt out of 2020 than any other player.
For revealing his turmoil and for whatever hope he might have inspired, Freeman
deserves to be the locallybased Athlete of the Year.
But fathers go on the same ride. Fred was at home in July, calling and wondering and praying. Freddie had bought him a house in Atlanta, but Fred leases it out.
“I told him I needed to come see him but he said, ‘ Why would you want to get this?’’’ Fred said. “It was really a strange deal. It was a little bit of his own fault, honestly. He thought that if he took Nyquil or Tylenol to bring the fever down, it would keep him from testing negative, so he could go out and play..
“He really thought there was a chance he wouldn’t make it. He said he wasn’t taking the medication and I said, ‘ Freddie, what are you doing?’ He wanted to play but he had to get healthy first.”
Behind the scenes, Freeman and his wife Chelsea worried about their 3- year- old son Charlie, and about the twin boys that she was carrying.
“Then we were worried about myocarditis,” Fred said, “so he went to Emory ( University) and passed that test. We started feeling better but there was a long way to go.”
There’s health and then there’s feeling good. The two didn’t match up for a while. Freeman had lost 14 pounds. He would hold runners on the bag and jump to a fielding position when the pitch was thrown. Even that normal move would rob Freeman of his breath.
“But after that Toronto game,” Fred said, “he called me and said, ‘ I think I’m good.’ And from that moment on he hit the ball hard all season.”
Freeman’s “good” is different from the new definitions. He rarely swings for the moon. He had 5.8 at- bats per strikeout, an improvement from 4.3 for his career, and had 16 more walks than Ks.
Fred’s office overlooks the Villa Park High field, and he remembered watching Bob Boone, the esteemed catcher, throwing to his three sons, two of whom were prominent big- leaguers.
“He had all of them hitting to the opposite field,” Fred said. “I thought that’s what I’d do with Freddie. I’d put 48 balls in each of three buckets. The first one he could hit to left- field, the second would be up the middle and the third would be anywhere he wanted.”
Their bonds are not just genetic. Freddie’s mother Rosemary died when he was 10, of melanoma. In 2012 he was plagued by vision problems, and as he went through different contact lenses he scratched his cornea.
“He’s tougher than I am,” Fred said. “The wind was giving him so many vision problems. I’d say, if it’s going to be terrible, why play? He’d say, no, the team needed him.”
It became a larger team than he realized.