Freddie Freeman‘s World Series heroics gave the Dodgers a 1-0 series lead on Friday night. With Los Angeles down to its final out in the bottom of the 10th inning, Freeman crushed a walk-off grand slam off of Nestor Cortes Jr. to give the Dodgers a 6-3 win in Game 1.
Freeman’s majestic home run gave Dodgers fans flashbacks to another iconic World Series moment. In 1988, Kirk Gibson hit a pinch-hit two-run home run in Game 1 of the World Series against the Oakland Athletics to give the Dodgers a 1-0 series lead. After Freeman’s game-winner, the comparisons immediately started flying.
Incredibly, the parallels don’t stop there. Both Gibson and Freeman were dealing with lower-body injuries when they had their massive moments, as Freeman has been in and out of the Dodgers’ lineup with an ankle injury that has been bothering him throughout the playoffs. Gibson was only a pinch-hitter in 1988 for a similar reason.
Freeman also became the second player to ever hit a walk-off home run in a World Series game with his team down to its final out. The first? You guessed it, it was Kirk Gibson for the Dodgers in 1988, according to Paul Casella of MLB Media.
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The big fly was Freeman’s first home run of the playoffs this year, and he only had one RBI in eight games coming into this one. He hadn’t been slumping, necessarily, but a moment like that has to be a massive confidence boost for him.
The top of the Dodgers’ lineup was lethal in Game 1, and it will be a chore for the Yankees to slow it down moving forward. Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman finished Game 1 with five of the Dodgers’ six RBI’s and three of their runs. If the Yankees can’t figure out how to slow that trio down, they’re going to have a hard time coming back in this series.