The date was November 24, 2018.

As referee Juan Martinez Munuera blew the whistle for full time, a disappointed Real Madrid team headed for the tunnel following a 3-0 La Liga defeat at Eibar, a game where Karim Benzema was flagged offside seven times, equalling a league record set by Elche’s Jonathas de Jesus in May 2015.

Nearly six years later, Kylian Mbappe, Benzema’s long-term replacement, went one better to make the unwanted record his own against another team in red and blue. Only this was in El Clasico in front of nearly 80,000 at the Bernabeu and millions worldwide as Real Madrid slumped to a 4-0 defeat.

Mbappe’s first Clasico was the subject of hype given he had six goals in four matches against Barcelona, including a hat-trick at Camp Nou. He also usually delivers in big games, with three goals in five matches against his current employers in the Champions League, four goals in two World Cup finals for France and 38 in 52 combined Ligue 1 games against Marseille, Lyon, Monaco and Lille.

On Saturday, Barca’s high line was expected to present him with opportunities if he and partner Vinicius Junior timed their runs, given their superior pace compared with Barcelona’s defenders.

A simple strategy on paper, but Mbappe struggled due to a combination of the occasion, an under-developed chemistry with his team-mates, and downright profligacy.

From kick-off on Saturday, Madrid’s approach was clear.

Their defenders would kick the ball up the pitch leaving Mbappe, Vinicius Jr and Jude Bellingham to win their duels.

If they lost the ball in the first phase, the physicality of Federico Valverde, Aurelien Tchouameni and Eduardo Camavinga gave them the upper hand against Barcelona’s front six. All three Madrid midfielders can also play through the press with quick passes, and this combination of qualities troubled Barca through the first half.

The final pieces of the jigsaw were well-timed runs and assured finishing, but two offsides within the opening 90 seconds of the game suggested that was easier said than done.

The second of those saw Camavinga slip Mbappe in behind in the wide gap between Jules Kounde, wary of Vinicius Jr, and Inigo Martinez after Pau Cubarsi stepped up to close Camavinga down. Mbappe raced through, but his finish was poor as he dragged it wide.

In the next 12 minutes, Mbappe twice contributed without the ball, pressing higher than he has ever done this season to force Martinez to go long and help his team regain possession. He also brought down a long pass from Eder Militao before spraying it out wide to Vinicius Jr to kickstart an attack.

Mbappe’s keenness to contribute was evident and his off-the-ball work laid the foundations for his side’s approach to the game.

Then came the third offside, which indicated that he had not learned from the previous instances.

Vinicius Jr once again pinned Kounde on the right and, while Cubarsi did not push up, Mbappe found space between the two Barcelona centre-backs. Mbappe looked over his shoulder, but still began his run a tad too early from Camavinga’s pass.

He was flagged offside after squaring the ball for Bellingham, who forced a fantastic save from Inaki Pena…

More off-the-ball pressure on Martinez forced another Barcelona turnover before the most glaring of Mbappe’s eight offsides arrived in the 19th minute. In this instance, too, he looked over his shoulder but made a premature run to meet Bellingham’s hooked pass forward from the right wing.

Six minutes later, Barca trapped him offside yet again. On this occasion, Mbappe got himself back onside but kept watching the ball, meaning he did not notice Cubarsi taking an extra step forward. When Ferland Mendy played him in from the left, he was a few inches ahead of the back line.

Mbappe was getting closer to figuring it out, though, and seemed to have done just that on the half-hour mark.

A searching ball from Antonio Rudiger found Lucas Vazquez on the right flank. Mbappe was notably offside when Vazquez received the ball but tracked back as Alejandro Balde closed down the Madrid captain. A couple of touches later, Vazquez released Mbappe in between and behind the centre-backs, and he raced forward before finishing with a deft chip…

… only for Madrid’s joy to be cut short after a VAR check.

This was the closest of the lot as the semi-automated replay below suggests. Interestingly, Vinicius Jr seemed to have his doubts when the goal went in as suggested by his initial hesitance (watch above) to join the celebrations.

The marginal nature of the call suggests that Vazquez, who had time and space thanks to Bellingham’s positioning, could have played the pass earlier.

Three minutes later, another long ball from the home defence caused Barcelona problems. Mbappe won the one-v-one against Cubarsi and raced forward, only for Martinez to track back and flick the ball behind for a corner.

That was the striker’s final telling contribution of the half as the teams went into the break level.

Madrid had created openings but, as the expected-goals (xG) chart below shows, offsides had rendered them largely meaningless with their xG not too far away from Barcelona’s, despite the visitors creating little of note.

The second half offered Madrid a chance to build on their dominance and, four minutes in, Mbappe made a well-timed run from behind Cubarsi to latch onto a Vazquez pass on the counter. His first touch was slightly heavy, allowing Cubarsi to put the ball behind for a corner. But this was encouraging for the Frenchman and his side.

That optimism, however, evaporated quickly.

In the 54th minute, the first signs of issues with Mbappe’s pressing could be seen. A half-hearted attempt to stop Marc Casado allowed the Barca midfielder to saunter into space and thread the needle to find Robert Lewandowski in Barcelona’s first successful attempt to play through Madrid.

Lewandowski, onside due to Mendy’s poor positioning, was clinical with his finish. The visitors led 1-0.

Two minutes later, more tepid pressing high up the pitch and a neat Barcelona passing move — made possible by the composure of half-time substitute Frenkie de Jong — saw Lewandowski score again from a Balde cross.

Now 2-0 down, Madrid’s backs were against the wall, but they created nothing of note until the 61st minute when Mbappe conjured his first legitimate shot of the game. Receiving a pass from Camavinga on the left, he cut inside on to his favoured right foot before firing a low shot straight at Pena.

A second shot followed three minutes later, coming after another well-timed run by Mbappe between Cubarsi and Martinez. He latched onto Vinicius Jr’s outside-of-the-boot pass from the left wing to bear down on goal, but Pena came well off his line to narrow the angle.

Rather than taking it around or lifting it over him, Mbappe shot first time, and straight at Pena.

Mbappe’s involvement was growing, but his struggles with the offside trap returned in the 66th minute.

Following a miscontrol by Raphinha in Madrid’s defensive third, Vazquez found Valverde, who was immediately closed down by Dani Olmo. Mbappe remained offside during both these actions.

Valverde initially looks up to find Mbappe (as well as Vinicius Jr and Bellingham) still in an offside position, allowing Olmo to apply more pressure. With no other options, he played the only available pass: to the Frenchman. Mbappe went on to finish the move with a shot into Pena’s far corner but was glaringly offside once again.

Mbappe’s third and final shot of the match came in the 71st minute.

After Olmo lost possession in his own half, Luka Modric lifted the ball over the back line to find Mbappe, who timed his run on Martinez’s blindside to perfection to create another one-vs-one opportunity. This time around, Pena stayed closer to the edge of the six-yard box, daring Mbappe to beat him at either post.

Mbappe chose the far post, but his execution was poor as Pena saved once again without breaking a sweat.

Mbappe’s final involvement in the game came in the opening seconds of stoppage time in a near-perfect example of how Madrid envisioned their original game plan would play out.

Bellingham drew Cubarsi forward for a long ball, which travelled over both and into the path of Vinicius Jr. He comfortably turned Kounde on the halfway line before finding Mbappe on the left flank. Mbappe raced through and forced a near-post save from Pena but, thanks to a clever dart backwards by Martinez, Cubarsi could recover to re-lay the offside trap again.

The result? The assistant referee’s flag went up yet again, marking 12 infractions for the hosts and eight for Mbappe alone…

In between Mbappe’s final shot and final offside, Barcelona had scored twice. The first was a thunderous near-post effort from Lamine Yamal, partially reminiscent of Mbappe’s first goal from his Camp Nou hat-trick in 2021. The second was a deft chip by Raphinha, who easily broke Madrid’s final line of defence from a long ball after they committed men forward.

Those goals epitomised what Madrid needed from Mbappe on the night, but he could never put both together.

At times, the occasion and perhaps an eagerness to make an impact seemed to overcome him; at others, he simply did not display the confidence that many associate with his game, particularly in front of goal. Being on the wrong side of those margins does not go unpunished in fixtures as big as this.

There is also the question of synergy with his new team-mates, which will improve with time. The Barcelona match stands out due to the volume of offsides, but it is worth noting that Mbappe had been caught offside at least once in seven of his nine La Liga games before Saturday.

Mbappe’s frustration shows (Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP via Getty Images)

Madrid as a team have been caught offside only 24 times this season, and Mbappe has contributed 17 of those. Vinicius Jr was offside twice against Barcelona but only once previously all season. The Brazilian has been smart with his runs in the knowledge of when his team-mates will release the ball and the awareness that he can beat most defenders with his pace.

For this partnership to work on the biggest stages — particularly given the duo’s limitations in leading the press — Mbappe will need to develop a similar in-game intelligence on top of improved chemistry with his team-mates. He will also need to reduce his profligacy when the chances arrive, with his six league goals this season coming from an xG of 7.7.

Playing for Madrid was Mbappe’s ultimate dream. With that realised, the hardest part of the job begins now.

(Top photo: David Ramos/Getty Images)

LOS ANGELES — It’s too soon to panic, too soon to form any opinion, really. If the initial diagnosis the Los Angeles Dodgers offered on Shohei Ohtani proves correct, he could very well be in the lineup Monday night for Game 3 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium.

Still, the injury Ohtani suffered to his left shoulder Saturday night cast a pall over Dodger Stadium, quieting the raucous crowd and creating an uneasiness rarely experienced by a team leading the Series two games to none.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Ohtani has a subluxation, a condition that occurs when the ball at the top of the upper arm bone comes out of the socket only partially, as opposed to completely, which happens during a dislocation.

If that’s all this is, it might not be a big deal, particularly short-term. Roberts said Ohtani’s strength was great, his range of motion good. But he cautioned that the Dodgers will not know more until Ohtani undergoes an MRI. Savvy fans understand that no diagnosis matters until the doctors check the scans. And given the Dodgers’ history with injuries, no one should assume Ohtani will be leading off Monday night at Yankee Stadium just yet.

The absence of Ohtani for even one game would diminish a series built on stars, from the likely MVPs, Ohtani and Aaron Judge, to the superstar right fielders, Mookie Betts and Juan Soto, to another likely Hall of Famer, Freddie Freeman, and a potential one, Giancarlo Stanton. The Series also features the two highest-paid pitchers in total value, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Gerrit Cole. Yamamoto, making his World Series debut Saturday night, allowed only one hit in 6 1/3 innings, a homer by Soto.

Ohtani, though, is at the center of it all. He suffered his injury Saturday night sliding into second base on an attempted steal in the seventh inning, with the Dodgers leading, 4-1. He was in obvious pain, rolling on the dirt, then slowly getting to his feet before an athletic trainer helped him walk off the field, supporting his left arm.

Ohtani is slow to get up after he attempted to steal 2nd. pic.twitter.com/T3Af5GRaiw

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) October 27, 2024

For a recent comparison, consider the San Diego Padres’ Fernando Tatis Jr., who reportedly sustained at least four subluxations in 2021. Tatis initially did not undergo surgery, believing his shoulder to be stable. But he reversed course in September 2022 while serving an 80-game suspension for using a banned performance-enhancing substance. Doctors repaired the labrum in his left shoulder. Tatis recovered by the time he was reinstated in April 2023. And that season, he appeared in 141 games.

Might Ohtani eventually meet the same fate? Perhaps, if he endures repeated subluxations. Treatment for shoulder instability includes both non-operative and surgical options, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. Ohtani, of course, is still recovering from major surgery on his right elbow, with the expectation he will pitch again in 2025. But even after stealing 59 bases this season as a full-time designated hitter, he almost certainly will limit his attempts once he returns to the mound, reducing the wear and tear on his body.

If Ohtani misses time during the Series, the Dodgers can adjust by moving Betts to the leadoff spot and making Freeman their DH. Max Muncy could move from third base to first and Kiké Hernández could play third. Roberts could round out his infield with some combination of Gavin Lux, Tommy Edman and Miguel Rojas, with Andy Pages playing center on days Edman replaces Rojas at short.

Not a bad collection of players, even though Freeman is playing on a severely sprained right ankle and Rojas will require sports hernia surgery during the offseason. Ohtani was only 1-for-8 in the first two games of the Series, his one hit a ringing double off Yankees reliever Tommy Kahnle in Game 1. But obviously, he’s an essential part of the Dodgers’ offense.

After striking out 10 times in 22 plate appearances in the Division Series, Ohtani broke out in the National League Championship Series, batting .364 with a 1.185 OPS. He has been an absolute terror in the postseason with runners in scoring position, going 15-for-22 in those situations.

With or without Ohtani, the Dodgers are in excellent position. The only way they will lose the Series is if they drop four of the next five games — not out of the question with the Series shifting to New York for Games 3, 4 and 5 (if necessary), but not all that likely, either. The Yankees have their own problems, most notably the performance of likely MVP Aaron Judge, who is batting .150 in the postseason with a .605 OPS and 19 strikeouts in 50 plate appearances.

The Dodgers being the Dodgers, they would use any absence by Ohtani as a rallying point. Betts was out nearly two months this season with a fractured left hand. Freeman was away for 10 days while his son Max, 3, dealt with Guillain-Barré syndrome, and later missed time with a broken finger and his ankle problem. And lest we forget, the Dodgers also placed 12 starting pitchers on the injured list.

No one should portray this team as an underdog, not when its estimated $325 million payroll was second only to the New York Mets. The Dodgers leveraged their financial might to build extraordinary depth. So even while somewhat depleted, their roster is strong enough for the club to be within two wins of its first World Series title since 2020, and its first in a full season since 1988.

The continuing presence of Ohtani would further enhance the Dodgers’ chances, and his return for Game 3 seemed quite possible, at least the way Roberts was talking. By now, we’ve all learned that underestimating Ohtani is foolish. Seriously, would anyone be surprised if he returned to hit the Series-clinching homer, and then defied the Dodgers’ insistence that he will not pitch again this season by earning the Series-clinching save?

All right, that’s a bit much to ask. Let’s just hope Ohtani plays again in the Series. Any time he misses will diminish baseball’s biggest spectacle in years. And as his past injuries have shown, every day he is out is a lesser day for the sport.

(Top photo of Shohei Ohtani exiting the field in Game 2: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

LOS ANGELES — Carlton Fisk … Kirby Puckett … Derek Jeter … David Freese.

As he smoothed the dirt in the batter’s box in the 10th inning Friday night, Freddie Freeman never could have envisioned he’d be spending the rest of his life hanging out with those October legends.

But then walk-off magic happened.

Before the next wave of Freeman’s bat, no living human could lean back in an easy chair and describe to you what a walk-off, lead-flipping, extra-inning World Series grand slam looked like. But we can now. It looks exactly like this.

FREDDIE FREEMAN WALK-OFF GRAND SLAM. #WORLDSERIES pic.twitter.com/5MIY5CaX6a

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) October 26, 2024

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History is an amazing thing to make — and a breathtaking thing to witness. A stadium rattles until it awakens every Richter Scale in Southern California. A walk-off hero jumps on home plate and disappears into a sea of hugs and laughs and tears of joy.

A scoreboard tries to tell this tale — Dodgers 6, Yankees 3 — but there is so much emotion and so much history that can’t possibly be captured by the final score of Friday’s Game 1 of the 2024 World Series.

So that’s where this column comes in handy. There are certain nights in October that seem to exist so those of us at Weird and Wild World HQ can help you make sense of them. This was one of those nights.

“Freddie just hit a ball that’s going to be in the history reels forever,” Dodgers reliever Michael Kopech told us afterward. “So it’s a special moment — for him and for us.”

When a man hits a walk-off home run in extra innings — in the World Freaking Series — he can’t imagine in that moment that the baseball is never going to come down. But he could ask the guys in the first sentence of this column …

Carlton Fisk … Kirby Puckett … Derek Jeter … David Freese.

They’re in that hallowed Extra-inning World Series Walk-off Club. So Freddie can ask them the next time he sees him. Or even better …

He could walk across his clubhouse and ask Max Muncy.

Six years ago, it was Muncy who stepped to the plate at 12:30 in the morning — California time — and pounded an 18th-inning walk-off home run of his own, to finish off the longest World Series game ever played: Game 3 of the 2018 Series.

It turned out to be the only game the Dodgers won against the Red Sox in that World Series. But if you think that means that home run was forgotten, Muncy is here to set you straight.

“Yeah, Freddie is gonna hear about this one for a long time,” Muncy said Friday night. “Freddie has hit some big home runs, especially in the postseason. But he’s gonna hear about this one.”

So why is that? What is it about home runs like this that cause them to reverberate through history and stick in our memory banks? We can help explain that!

Extra special

This was the 693rd game in World Series history. So think about how wild (and weird) it is that no hitter, in any of those other 692 games, had written a script to match Freddie Freeman’s script.

How many walk-off slams had ever been hit, in any other World Series game? Yep, that would be none.

In fact, only one walk-off slam had ever ended a game in any other postseason round. That was hit by Nelson Cruz, in Game 2 of the 2011 ALDS. So what were the odds that Cruz would be in the park for this one, as a member of the Spanish-language Univision broadcast team? Baseball!

But moving right along, here comes a distinction even wilder than that. Wouldn’t you think that sometime, in the 119 previous World Series, somebody would have dug into a batter’s box somewhere, with his team trailing, and hit an extra-inning home run that turned a loss into a win?

You would think that, all right. But you would think wrong — because the complete list of men to do that consists of …

Freddie Freeman!

Or wouldn’t you think that somebody would have hit a home run that at least tied a World Series game in extra innings? Nope. No one has ever hit one of those, either.

So what we saw Freeman do Friday, in the 10th inning at Dodger Stadium, was produce an all-time October moment. And who can ever get enough of them!

“When you get told you do something like that, in this game that’s been around a very long time — I love the history of this game,” Freeman said. “To be a part of it, it’s special.”

GO DEEPER

Rosenthal: For Freddie Freeman, his family and Dodgers fans, a grand moment on the biggest stage

She is … gone

As the 10th inning began Friday night, one of my fellow baseball scribes turned to me and asked: What are the chances that Kirk Gibson limps out of the dugout to hit in this inning?

We laughed at the thought. But in retrospect …

In the history of the World Series, just two men have ever stood in a batter’s box with their team one out from defeat … and then hit a walk-off home run that changed everything:

Kirk Gibson, Game 1, 1988
Freddie Freeman, Game 1, 2024

(Hat tip: Paul Casella, MLB.com)

Geez. Holy Chavez Ravine. Gibson, of course, flipped that 1988 script in the ninth inning, not the 10th. Nevertheless, is that goosebumpy enough for you — even if Freeman hadn’t been limping around all week, much like Gibson did back in the day?

But when a few of us tried to recast The Kirk Gibson Story afterward, with Freeman as the new lead in this production, Freeman’s teammates were not all in on that. Especially not after Freeman had tripled in his first at-bat of the Series. After all, Gibson could barely make it to third base after his home run back in ’88. So are we sure this was the same thing?

C’mon, Muncy said, “Freddie’s been hobbling too fast. He’s moving good. He had a triple tonight. So I don’t know if you can compare that. From everything I heard, Gibson had half a leg.”

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Feels like a good time to show Kirk Gibson’s walk-off home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series pic.twitter.com/PC2PuhRwAf

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) October 26, 2024

In a year that has been so improbable …

Freeman’s euphoric teammates wait to greet him at the plate after he ended Game 1. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Imagn Images)

When Freeman wriggled into the box with two outs in the 10th, the Dodgers’ chances of winning this game were only 26.7 percent, according to Baseball Reference. That changed swiftly, obviously. One moonshot into the right-field pavilion later, those chances were more like 100 percent.

So if you’re adding along at home, you know what that means: Freeman’s homer had just jumped their Win Probability by a staggering 73.3 percent, with one swing of the bat. Does that seem good? We’ll do you a favor, by stepping outside those decimal points to tell you just how good.

This was officially one of the biggest, most game-changing swings in the history of the World Series!

So there. Does that help make sense of it? And how cool is it that we can measure that with Baseball Reference’s handy dandy Pivotal Play Finder, which can rank every World Series hit by its Win Probability Added. So we did that.

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Most pivotal extra-inning homers 

HITTER	GAME/YEAR	WIN PROBABILITY ADDED
Freddie Freeman	Game 1, 2024	73.3%
Derek Jeter	Game 4, 2001 Advertisement	46.1%

Most pivotal extra-inning hits 

HITTER	GAME/YEAR	WIN PROBABILITY ADDED
Freddie Freeman	Game 1, 2024	73.3%
Tris Speaker* Advertisement	Game 8, 1912	50.5%

 (*game-tying single in 10^th)

Most pivotal bases-loaded hits 

HITTER	GAME/YEAR	WIN PROBABILITY ADDED
Freddie Freeman	Game 1, 2024   Advertisement	73.3%
Terry Pendleton*	Game 2, 1985	68.9%

(*lead-flipping double with two outs in ninth)

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And finally, here it comes, the leaderboard you’ve been waiting for but might not have known you were. It’s the …

Most pivotal World Series walk-off hits ever 

HITTER	GAME/YEAR	WIN PROBABILITY ADDED
Kirk Gibson	Game 1, 1988	87%
Freddie Freeman Advertisement	Game 1, 2024	73.3%
Joe Carter	Game 6, 1993	65.6% Advertisement

(Source: Baseball Reference)

GO DEEPER

How Freddie Freeman delivered an iconic swing on a bad ankle: ‘You dream about those moments’

Their intentions were good

After the intentional walk, Freeman dropped the mic. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Imagn Images)

But wait. There’s more. This grand slam would not have been possible if the Yankees hadn’t filled up the bases by intentionally walking Mookie Betts to pitch to Freeman. So how rare is a postseason grand slam following an intentional walk?

Whoa, we hadn’t had one of those since … 12 days ago, when these same Dodgers intentionally walked Francisco Lindor to fill the bases for Mark Vientos … in this same stadium. The baseball gods work in mysterious ways, don’t they?

But if we just confine this discussion to intentional walks that set up a slam in the World Series, we have only four of those in history:

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YEAR	GAME	INT BB	HIT SLAM	INNING
1951	WS Game 5	Johnny Mize	Gil McDougald	3rd Advertisement
1956	WS Game 7	Yogi Berra	Bill Skowron	7th Advertisement
1992	WS Gm 6	David Justice	Lonnie Smith	5th Advertisement
2024	WS Gm 1	Mookie Betts	Freddie Freeman	10th Advertisement

(Source: STATS Perform)

But you’ll notice this was the first extra-inning intentional walk to set up a grand slam in World Series history — and only the second in postseason history. The other was issued by … Dave Roberts, who intentionally walked a guy named Juan Soto to get to Howie Kendrick in the 10th inning of Game 5 of the 2019 NLDS. That didn’t go quite as well for the Dodgers manager as this!

No wonder Roberts would later describe this game as maybe “the greatest baseball moment I’ve ever witnessed.”

But he was not alone. We’ve measured the cool factor of this home run with lots of numbers. Yet maybe the truest measure was the euphoria this epic blast infused in Freeman’s teammates. An hour later, that feeling hadn’t subsided — not even a little.

“I can’t imagine how Freddie is feeling right now,” said Michael Kopech, “because I feel like I’m floating.”

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There’s another baseball game to play Saturday. So the Dodgers will show up and play all nine innings of it (assuming that’s enough). But we should let them in on a secret. If they go on to win this thing, when they all close their eyes — in five years, 10 years, 20 years — and think back on this World Series, they’ll still be floating …

Just like Freeman’s walk-off slam for the ages.

Party of Three

Freeman celebrates after tripling in the first inning. (Jason Parkhurst / Imagn Images)

OK, hang with us for just another minute. There are three more things you need to know about this game!

EMPTY NESTOR — Somebody has to give up these momentous home runs. In this case, that somebody was Nestor Cortes. So what’s his claim to fame? As Eric Orns, one of our favorite readers/baseball stat gurus, reports, Cortes became the first pitcher in postseason history — at least in the pitch-count era (1988-present) — to give up two runs on two pitches.

First pitch — spectacular catch by Alex Verdugo on Shohei Ohtani’s foul looper down the left-field line.

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Next pitch (after an intentional walk that now requires zero pitches) — walk-off slam.

Hey, at least the Dodgers didn’t run up his pitch count.

GO DEEPER

Nestor Cortes wanted the ball. And all that came with it

GRAND SLAM FEVER — Does it feel like there’s a grand slam every week in this postseason? It should — because this was the fifth of the postseason. And we’re not through playing yet. So as Orns reminds us, it would take only one more slam to break the record for most in a single postseason.

The two years with five of them: 2021 and 1998. Stay tuned!

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TRIPLE THREAT — Finally, have we mentioned that Freeman had a triple in his first at-bat of this game and a walk-off extra-inning homer in his last at-bat? We had a hunch he was the first player in history to do that in a World Series. Boy, were we wrong. But it was worth checking … because what a list of guys who have hit a triple and an extra-inning walk-off in the same World Series game.

Freddie Freeman	Game 1, 2024
David Freese	Game 6, 2011 Advertisement
Derek Jeter	Game 4, 2001
Kirby Puckett	Game 6, 1991

(Source: Baseball Reference / Stathead)

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Just looking at that list, it reminded us that we remember those games as The David Freese Game … The Derek Jeter “Mr. November” Game … and The Kirby Puckett “We’ll See You Tomorrow Night” Game. So little does Freeman know it, but what we saw Friday will go down in the annals as (what else) The Freddie Freeman Game. Which tells you all you need to know about a classic October evening of …

Baseball!

GO DEEPER

Freeman’s grand statement lifts Dodgers over Yankees in Game 1: Takeaways

GO DEEPER

Yankees’ Boone explains ill-fated decision to use Cortes against Dodger lefties

GO DEEPER

Juan Soto owns defensive shortcomings in Game 1, as sloppy play stifles Yankees

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(Top photo: Keith Birmingham / MediaNews Group / Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)