Freddie Freeman Going Into the Hall of Fame as a Dodger Would Be a Travesty

He did it again, folks. It took 18 innings and nearly seven hours, but Freddie Freeman came to the plate for the ninth time in Game 3 and delivered his second World Series walk-off home run in as many years. It looks like he may be well on his way to a second championship as a Dodger, with who knows how many more coming.

When I awoke to see what had transpired in the dead of night, I was overcome with a harrowing thought: as disgusting and unthinkable as it would have seemed just a few years ago, this guy might be going into the Hall of Fame with an LA cap on his plaque.

Freeman has two more seasons left on his contract in Los Angeles and he'll be 38 years old at its conclusion. If he wins this World Series, he'll have two rings in four seasons as a Dodger compared to one title in his 12 years with the Braves. He won an MVP award and was a five-time All-Star in Atlanta — it should be eight, given that there was no All-Star Game in 2020 and Freeman was somehow not an All-Star in 2016 or 2017 when he had an OPS over .950 in both years — and has made the All-Star team in each of his four seasons in LA. Freeman's 162-game averages are just about identical in both cities, a testament to his consistency and longevity.

But when people think back on his career, the first two things they're going to think of are his World Series homers in Dodger Stadium.

I hope Freddie gets his number retired in both cities and I completely understand that he's a Dodgers legend with what he's done there in the last two Octobers. But I simply cannot accept that this man will not be wearing a Braves cap in Cooperstown. He started his career as the heir apparent to Chipper Jones, stayed through an arduous rebuild in which his contemporaries in the lineup were the likes of Adonis Garcia and the ghost of Jonny Gomes and then finally got to see it all come together to win a World Series in what ended up being his final season in Atlanta.

He was practically sobbing when he returned to Truist Park and was presented with his championship ring, so much so that Clayton Kershaw publicly commented he hoped the Dodgers weren't "second fiddle" in Freeman's mind. I still believe if Freddie had it his way, he would have never played in a uniform other than the Atlanta Braves.

But that's not how life works sometimes and now the Braves have allowed what should have been a franchise icon to go play somewhere else and potentially be enshrined as one of the greatest to ever play the game of baseball wearing a Dodgers cap. Sad stuff, man.