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LOS ANGELES — About an hour after the closest thing to a perfect baseball game possible, Freddie Freeman stood near home plate at Dodger Stadium, where he had just ended Game 1 of the World Series with an extra-inning grand slam, and tried to explain what had just happened. Over 10 innings and 3 hours, 27 minutes, the game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees morphed from a pitchers’ duel into a hitting and baserunning clinic into strategic theater into an indelible highlight among the 120 years of World Series. Baseball at its finest comes in many forms. This game somehow managed to cram them all into one.

The final score — Dodgers 6, Yankees 3 — does not scream classic. It is misleading. On Friday night, the 52,394 souls lucky enough to witness Game 1 in person beheld the rare sporting event that teems with hoopla only to find it exceeded. The two most famous franchises in baseball, genuine elites of their coasts, fought. And then with one swing, on a first-pitch 93 mph fastball from Nestor Cortes, Freeman managed to deliver the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history and limp around the bases 36 years after Kirk Gibson famously did the same.

“Just look at this game,” Freeman said, and he started listing everything that had unfolded. Four innings of shutout baseball. The Dodgers manufacturing a run on a sacrifice fly. Giancarlo Stanton countering with a towering two-run home run. The Dodgers punching back with a run off Yankees closer Luke Weaver. The Yankees seemingly going ahead on what appeared to be a Gleyber Torres home run, only for it to be ruled interference when a Dodgers fan reached over the fence to snag it, which was confirmed by replay. New York tagging Los Angeles’ best reliever, Blake Treinen, for a run in the 10th. And the tension of the bottom of the 10th: a walk and an infield single to bring up Shohei Ohtani, whose foul out to left advanced the runners to second and third, opening up a base for Yankees manager Aaron Boone to intentionally walk Mookie Betts, giving Freeman the matchup against Cortes, who hadn’t thrown a pitch since Sept. 18.

“Back-and-forth moments — that’s what creates classics,” Freeman said. “And I think we created one tonight.”

The tens of millions who watched it, in the United States and Japan and around the world, know that they did. Great baseball can be as filled with good (Jazz Chisholm Jr. stealing second and third before scoring in the 10th inning) as it is with bad (he was able to do so because of Treinen’s slow delivery). It can include great defense (Dodgers shortstop Tommy Edman saving a run in the sixth knocking by keeping a grounder in the infield) and unsightly (both of the Yankees’ corner outfielders playing doubles into triples).

“Some people think a slugfest is a good game,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said. “Some people think a pitcher’s duel is a good game. I don’t know. I think if you just add a little bit of all the elements, it’s pretty fun.”

This game had plenty. Before the first pitch, there was already built-in tension for the starters: Gerrit Cole and Jack Flaherty, two right-handers who grew up in Southern California. The Dodgers had tried desperately to sign Cole when he was a free agent, and the Yankees tried to trade for Flaherty in July only to back away, and the two men, now playing against their one-time suitors, spent the early innings one-upping each other.

Stanton’s sixth-inning home run and subsequent stare — not to mention Flaherty’s forlorn face after realizing the mistake he’d made — left the Dodgers trailing 2-1, and marked the beginning of the scheming between Boone and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who had left in Flaherty for the third time through the order and paid dearly. Boone turning to Weaver in the eighth after Ohtani doubled off the top of the wall and advanced to third thanks to New York’s sloppy defense was strategically sound but failed to prevent the Dodgers from tying the score.

Two innings later, it could have been Ohtani again or Betts or anyone, really, in the Dodgers’ top-to-bottom scary lineup. That it was Freeman, the 35-year-old first baseman, was as exceptional a denouement as imaginable.

“I was hoping Mookie would get a hit to take the pressure off him,” said Freeman’s father, Fred, to whom Freeman ran after the home run, interlocking hands through the netting that surrounds the field. “Then they walked him. And I was like, ‘Oh, Freddie, Freddie, Freddie.’ And then first pitch.”

Over the past month, watching Freeman has been painful. Not only because throughout the Dodgers’ first 11 playoff games he hadn’t mustered an extra-base hit. Freeman is clearly in pain. His sprained ankle throbs. His body aches. He is an eight-time All-Star, a future Hall of Famer, a World Series champion with Atlanta in 2021. He had been through a brutal year already, with his 3-year-old son, Max, suffering through a bout of Guillain-Barré syndrome. Freeman kept pushing through the pain, hoping the five days off since the NLCS would do his body enough good to do something memorable.

His first-inning triple, with him hobbling around the bases, indicated he was primed to. Little did anyone know an even better finale was to come.

“In my eyes, he’s a superhero, really, honestly and truly,” Dodgers reliever Anthony Banda said. “Watching him get through the injury and seeing the rehab he put in, the time he put in and just trying to get back to health, to get back on the field, doing everything he can — that speaks volumes of him as a player and as a person. He really cares about this group. He cares about the organization. He cares about winning, and that’s what drives us all.”

That’s true of everyone on the field Friday, including the Yankees, who now must recover from as knee-buckling a gut punch as can be thrown. The good news is, there remains plenty of baseball to be played, countless opportunities for the Yankees to do so, and the standard set for the rest of the series has gone from high to stratospheric.

To suggest any of the games, however many remain, can match Game 1 is unfair — unless this is the sort of series where magic courses throughout, where two teams are so good, so evenly matched, so ready for the moment, so keen to win, that the hype is simply an accelerant. Maybe Game 2 on Saturday night continues where Game 1 so clearly delivered.

“The ending,” Dodgers center fielder Kiké Hernández said. “I mean, it doesn’t get better than that.”

It does, actually, because Hernández is forgetting one thing. When it comes to the Dodgers and Yankees, the 120th World Series, this battle of the titans who have so much more great baseball in them, it’s just the beginning.

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2025 MLB All-Star Game: Everything you need to know

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2025 MLB All-Star Game: Everything you need to know

For the first time since the turn of the century, MLB’s All-Star Game will be held in Atlanta — the first ever at Truist Park since its opening in 2017.

All-Star festivities begin July 11 and culminate in the Midsummer Classic on July 15, as the National League looks to gain just its second win since 2013 while the American League aims to extend its dominance.

Following the first phase of All-Star voting, we know the top overall vote-getters in each league — Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani — automatically earned the starting spot at their positions, outfield and designated hitter, respectively. Now, the starting lineups have been revealed, with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Detroit Tigers leading the way each with three starters, followed by the Chicago Cubs with two. Four players named as starters — Cal Raleigh, Jacob Wilson, Ryan O’Hearn and Pete Crow-Armstrong — are first-time All-Stars.

Stay tuned, as we’ll have everything you need to navigate All-Star Week — from event schedules and full rosters to All-Star Game analysis.

Vote for the All-Star starters: All-Star Ballot 2025

Latest news and analysis

How does MLB All-Star voting work?

2025 MLB All-Star roster predictions, biggest debates

Which slugger will win the HR Derby? Breaking down the field

All-Star schedule

(All times ET)

July 2: MLB All-Star starters reveal at 7 p.m. on ESPN

July 6: MLB All-Star full rosters announced at 5 p.m. on ESPN

July 11: HBCU Swingman Classic at 8 p.m. on MLB Network

July 13: MLB Draft at 6 p.m. on ESPN and MLB Network

July 14: MLB All-Star Celebrity Softball Game at 1 p.m. on MLB Network

July 14: MLB Home Run Derby at 8 p.m. on ESPN

July 15: All-Star Red Carpet Show at 2 p.m. on MLB Network

July 15: MLB All-Star Game at 7 p.m. on FOX

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Rangers activate Burger from IL, demote Jung

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Rangers activate Burger from IL, demote Jung

The Texas Rangers reinstated first baseman Jake Burger from the 10-day injured list before Wednesday night’s series finale against the visiting Baltimore Orioles.

Burger, 29, missed the Rangers’ past 10 games with a left oblique strain. He is batting .220 with 10 homers and 29 RBIs in 65 games this season, his first with Texas.

Burger is a career .246 hitter with 82 home runs and 214 RBIs in 409 games with the Chicago White Sox (2021-23), Miami Marlins (2023-24) and Rangers.

The Rangers optioned All-Star third baseman Josh Jung to Triple-A Round Rock in a corresponding move. Jung, 27, is batting .237 with eight homers and 35 RBIs in 75 games this season.

Jung is hitting .152 with one homer, eight RBIs and 13 strikeouts in his last 11 games.

Drafted No. 8 overall by Texas in 2019, Jung made the American League All-Star team in 2023 and is a career .252 hitter with 43 home runs and 135 RBIs in 269 games.

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Outfielder Pillar retires after 13-year career

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Outfielder Pillar retires after 13-year career

Kevin Pillar, an outfielder who spent the majority of his 13-year major league career with the Toronto Blue Jays, announced his retirement on Wednesday.

Pillar confirmed his decision during an appearance on the Foul Territory podcast, about a month after he was released by the Texas Rangers. After rehabilitating from offseason thumb surgery, Pillar played in 20 games for the Rangers – his 10th major league team – with nine hits in 43 at-bats.

Pillar, 36, was drafted by the Blue Jays in the 32nd round in 2011 and made his debut in 2013. He was traded to the San Francisco Giants early in the 2019 season, which was his best in the big leagues. He batted .264 with 21 home runs, 87 RBI and 14 steals for the Giants that year, before signing with the Boston Red Sox in 2020.

“You will always be our Superman,” the Blue Jays said in a congratulatory social media post.

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