‘I’m never going to stop’: Inside Freddie Freeman and the Dodgers’ march to a title that solidified their dominant era
-
Jeff Passan, ESPN
NEW YORK — Two days before the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ postseason began, Freddie Freeman felt a twinge in his rib cage when he took a swing during a simulated game. He vowed to ignore it. It’s not as if he wasn’t already in pain. Over the previous week, Freeman had nursed a sprained right ankle sustained trying to avoid a tag while running to first base. He needed no more impediments. The Dodgers had a World Series to win.
A day later, Oct. 4, after Freeman finished a news conference in which he declared himself ready to play despite the ankle injury, he retreated to the batting cage at Dodger Stadium. He wanted to take some swings in preparation for a live batting-practice session. His side tingled with each of his first dozen swings. On the 13th swing, Freeman felt a jolt through his body and crumpled to the ground.
Unable to even pick himself off the floor, Freeman was helped into the X-ray room next to Los Angeles’ dugout. The results were inconclusive, and around 9:30 p.m., he received a call. The Dodgers wanted him to drive to Santa Monica for more imaging. He hopped in the car, then in an MRI tube. Around 11:30 p.m., the results arrived: Freeman had broken the costal cartilage in his sixth rib, an injury that typically sidelines players for months.
Devastation set in. Walking hurt. Breathing stung. Swinging a bat felt like an impossibility.
Freeman’s father, Fred, worried about his youngest son, whom he raised after Freeman’s mother, Rosemary, died of melanoma when Freddie was 10. He saw the anguish in every minuscule movement. Considering the injuries to his rib and ankle and the lasting soreness from a middle finger he fractured in August, surely Freeman was too beaten up to keep playing. Surely there would be more postseasons, more opportunities.
“I actually told him to stop,” Fred said. “I said, ‘Freddie, this is not worth it. I know you love baseball. I love baseball. But it’s not worth what you’re going through.’ And he looked at me like I was crazy, and he said, ‘Dad, I’m never going to stop.'”
NOT ONLY DID Freeman never stop, he put on one of the Dodgers’ greatest Fall Classic performances in history and readied the franchise for its first victory parade in 36 years.
The championship was won in a Game 5 that saw the Dodgers stake the New York Yankees a five-run lead, claw back for a 7-6 victory thanks to one of the most horrific half-innings in the Yankees’ storied history, and seal the championship with bravura performances from their bullpen and manager.
Los Angeles never got to fete the Dodgers for their World Series victory in 2020. Beyond the lack of a celebration, the title had been demeaned and denigrated by those who regarded it as a lesser championship, the product of a 60-game season played in front of no fans and a postseason run inside a pseudo-bubble. To the Dodgers, that always registered as unfair, and they used the slight as fuel.
“Twenty-nine other teams wanted to win the last game, too, regardless of the circumstances,” said right-hander Walker Buehler, who pitched the ninth inning of Game 5 to close the series for the Dodgers. “Like, everyone that talks about it, fine. … But 29 other professional, billion-dollar organizations would’ve liked to have won the last one. And we did.”
Los Angeles’ fortunes in recent postseasons have belied its evolution into the best organization in baseball. This season, the Dodgers won a major-leagues-best 98 games and their 11th National League West division title in 12 years. Their only championship in that time came in 2020. The Dodgers felt as if they had a World Series stolen from them in 2017 by a Houston Astros team later found to have used a sign-stealing scheme. A juggernaut Boston Red Sox team bulldozed them in five games a year later. The past two years, Los Angeles flamed out in first-round division series.
The Dodgers wanted this championship for so many reasons beyond the obvious. Regardless of a baseball team’s talent or payroll — both areas in which this team finds itself at the game’s apex — October is a baseball funhouse mirror. A team fat on ability can look waifish in a hurry. The short series, the odd schedule, the capacity for a lesser team to beat a better one simply because it gets hot at the right time — all of it conspires to render April through September inert. Teams built for the six-month marathon that is the regular season aren’t necessarily well-constructed for the postseason’s one-month sprint. A team’s ability to code-switch is its greatest quality.
This year, Los Angeles craved validation for its regular-season dominance. Something to silence those who malign its 2020 championship and chalk up its success not to sound decision-making processes and elite player development but an endless flow of cash. The Dodgers cannot deny the power of the dollar after guaranteeing $700 million in free agency to star designated hitter Shohei Ohtani and another $325 million to Japanese right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Ohtani hit 54 home runs and stole 59 bases during the regular season. Yamamoto threw six brilliant innings in his first World Series game. Money plays.
“World Series champions come in all different sizes and shapes and forms,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “And there are different strengths that help you win a World Series.”
Their lineup was an obvious one. Even a hobbled Freeman is still an eight-time All-Star — and a former MVP, just like the two men ahead of him in the lineup, Ohtani and Mookie Betts. The Dodgers led major league baseball in home runs and slugging percentage while finishing second in runs scored and on-base percentage . For all the depth the Dodgers’ lineup featured, though, the pitching staff was threadbare on account of a mess of injuries. With just three starting pitchers and a half-dozen trusted relievers — not to mention the necessity of throwing bullpen games, further taxing arms — Los Angeles required a deft touch with its pitching.
Championships take luck and timing and depth and open-mindedness and savvy. World Series are won as much on the margins as they are in the core. And every championship team features something beyond that, a separator, a je ne sais quoi. Like, say, a starter suffering through his worst season emerging to close out a World Series game. Or someone who refuses to let his broken body impede a quest so meaningful to those who rely on him.
IN 2005, WHEN Freddie Freeman was 15 years old, he was hit by a pitch that broke his wrist. Freeman was scheduled to play for Team USA’s 16-and-under national team, and he couldn’t let the opportunity pass. So he simply didn’t tell anyone about his wrist injury and gritted through the agony.
Almost two decades later, Freeman started Game 1 of the division series against San Diego without publicly divulging his broken rib cartilage. Even the slightest competitive advantage can separate win from loss, and Freeman understood the sort of challenge the Padres posed. They had constructed their roster for postseason baseball: heavy on power hitters and front-line bullpen arms, light on offensive swing-and-miss. San Diego ousted the Dodgers from the postseason in 2022 and was prepared to do the same in 2024.
The Dodgers cherished Freeman’s presence, even if he was playing at far less than 100 percent. Their manager, Dave Roberts, told Freeman that simply standing in the batter’s box imputed a particular sort of value: the fear of the unknown. If Freeman were healthy enough to play, opponents would figure, surely he could contribute, too. What San Diego didn’t know was that every time Freeman strode to fire his compact, powerful left-handed swing, his right ankle felt as if it was about to buckle. And when he whiffed on a pitch, his side screamed silently.
“It only hurts when I miss,” Freeman told his father. “So I’m just going to have to stop missing.”
In the first game of the series, with his midsection bound by kinesiology tape to stabilize it, Freeman laced a pair of singles. The limp in his running drew attention away from the rib. When he winced after swing-and-misses — Freeman did so four times in Game 1 of the NLDS — the ankle served as an ideal cover for the actual nerve center of the pain: his rib. After winning the first game, Los Angeles dropped the next two to the Padres, and his symptoms worsened.
“Every day,” Dodgers hitting coach Aaron Bates said, “I would ask: ‘How’s your ankle? How’s your rib? How’s your finger? How’s your brain?'”
The 2024 season already had strained Freeman’s psyche. In late July, his 3-year-old son, Maximus, was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a neurological disorder that necessitated the use of a ventilator and left him unable to walk for a period. Freeman left the Dodgers during the final week of July to take care of Max. Although Freeman returned in early August, when Max was discharged from the hospital and started his recovery, the detritus of the episode remained.
Freeman and his wife, Chelsea, carved days into pieces. Wake up. Get to the afternoon. Then the evening. Then the morning. And repeat.
“It was more just breaking things up, all those small things just to get yourself through,” Chelsea said.
“Never think big picture,” Fred said.
“And then you look back,” Chelsea said, “and you’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, we can’t believe we went through all that.'”
The perspective helped when the pain in Freeman’s rib would not relent. After Game 3, Freeman listened to Fred. No matter how much treatment he received, how much doctors and trainers did to mask the pain, he needed a break. But to require it in an elimination game — he was despondent. Freeman had signed with the Dodgers on a six-year, $162 million free agent contract in 2022 after a protracted free agency. He joined them following a World Series-winning season with the Atlanta Braves, where he spent the first 12 years of his career. Losing in the division series for the third straight year was not an option. Losing to the Padres again was unthinkable.
When his teammates learned Freeman would sit out Game 4, they rallied around him in the team’s group chat. Kiké Hernández, Miguel Rojas, Max Muncy, Betts — they were in awe of Freeman and what he had done already and offered their appreciation. He had rescued them so many times. They would resuscitate the Dodgers’ season in his absence. The offense scored eight runs, and eight Dodgers relievers combined to shut San Diego out. Two days later, with Freeman back in the lineup, Yamamoto threw five scoreless innings, the bullpen added four more and the Dodgers surged into the NL Championship Series against the New York Mets.
Once there, Freeman struggled, mustering only three singles in 18 at-bats and sitting out Game 4 again. The rest of the Dodgers thrived. Ohtani and Betts each whacked a pair of home runs. Muncy, a remnant of the 2020 team, set a postseason record by reaching base in 12 consecutive at-bats. Tommy Edman hit .407, drove in 11 runs and won NLCS MVP as the Dodgers bounced the Mets in six games. They were off to another World Series, another opportunity to substantiate their belief in themselves, where they would face their American League analog in prestige and might: the New York Yankees.
“Freddie doesn’t complain about really anything,” Chelsea said. “He was getting over four hours of treatment a day, even on days that they weren’t playing, just to be able to hope to play in the postseason. So going into the World Series, we had no expectations. We just were hoping he’d be able to play.”
HAD THE DODGERS deposed the Mets in five games, the World Series would have started Oct. 22, two days after the conclusion of the NLCS. Instead, the Dodgers had four days off, and in that time something happened. On Oct. 21, the day after Los Angeles celebrated its NL pennant, Freeman rested. On Oct. 22, he went through his usual treatment routine and felt noticeably better. By Oct. 23, the respite and therapy felt as if they were making a demonstrable difference in his recovery. On Oct. 24, the day before Game 1 of the most anticipated World Series in years, Freeman and the Dodgers’ staff had identified a cue to unlock the power that had gone missing in the first two rounds of the playoffs.
Freeman would tell himself to stride more toward first base. In actuality, he was not doing so; it would leave him vulnerable to outside pitches, which he had made a Hall of Fame career shooting to the opposite field. The idea of doing so, though, prevented Freeman from hunching over as he swung. A more vertical stance, in theory, would allow Freeman to drive the fastballs that had eaten him up in the NLCS, when he went 2-for-13 against them.
“Dad,” Freeman told Fred, “my swing is back. It’s as good as it’s been all year.”
Fred had heard this plenty of times before. Sometimes his son was right; sometimes he wasn’t. Fred wanted to be optimistic. He needed to see it to believe it.
In the first inning of Game 1, against Yankees ace Gerrit Cole, Freeman sliced a curveball down the left-field line and motored toward second base. New York left fielder Alex Verdugo misplayed the ball, an early sign of the state of the Yankees’ defense, and Freeman kept running. He chugged into third base, slid, popped up, stared into the Dodgers’ dugout, lifted his arms and shook side to side — the original version of what has become known as the Freddie Dance, a celebration adopted by all the Dodgers for big hits.
At the end of the inning, Freeman was left stranded on third base, his ankle throbbing. While the tenderness in his rib area had abated somewhat and his finger felt good enough to throw the ball normally, the 270 feet of running from home to third reminded Freeman that Humpty Dumpty hadn’t been put back together entirely. He tried to joke about it — Freeman occasionally asked Dodgers assistant general manager Alex Slater: “Can we trade ankles?” — but his hobbling was a serious reminder that the between-series break was over.
What unfolded that night constituted one of the best opening games in World Series history. Cole and Dodgers starter Jack Flaherty traded scoreless frames until the Dodgers scored a run in the fifth. The Yankees answered with two in the sixth. Los Angeles tied the score in the eighth. And on to extra innings it went, with New York scratching across a run in the top of the 10th. In the bottom of the inning, Gavin Lux walked with one out. Edman — like Flaherty a trade-deadline acquisition — singled. Yankees manager Aaron Boone called on left-hander Nestor Cortes, who hadn’t pitched in more than five weeks due to an arm injury, to face Ohtani. He induced a flyout.
Boone then intentionally walked Betts to load the bases and face Freeman. Cortes challenged him with a 93 mph fastball on the inside corner, the sort for which his cue was made. He swung, took two steps and lifted his bat with his right hand, Los Angeles’ version of Lady Liberty. The ball flew seven rows into the right-field bleachers. Dodger Stadium shook. Roberts was so giddy reveling in the moment that he bumped into the right arm of Gavin Stone, the young right-hander who two weeks earlier had undergone major shoulder surgery.
In the 119 previous years of World Series games, 695 in all, never had a player hit a walk-off grand slam. Freeman doing so in Game 1, then shambling around the bases invoking memories of Kirk Gibson 36 years earlier — the last time Los Angeles won a full-season World Series — added a poetic touch to the night, one of the most memorable in Dodgers postseason history.
“Game 1, when he hit the grand slam, felt like we won the World Series,” Chelsea said. “Like we were going to win.”
While Chelsea knows baseball well enough to understand it’s never that easy, in the next few games, Freddie continued to make it look so. He blasted another home run off a fastball in a Game 2 win. His two-run, first-inning shot on a high inside 93 mph Clarke Schmidt cutter in Game 3 gave the Dodgers a lead they held for their second consecutive 4-2 victory. For the series’ first three games, Freeman was single-handedly carrying the Dodgers’ offense, just the way it had collectively carried him through the NLCS. Muncy was hitless. Betts cooled down. And Ohtani partially dislocated his shoulder sliding into second base during Game 2 and was never a factor in the series.
The presence of Ohtani, who had absconded from the Los Angeles Angels in pursuit of a championship, as well as that of Yankees slugger Aaron Judge, had turned this World Series into a supersized event — but Freeman was the one owning it. He hit another two-run shot in the first inning of Game 4, marking an MLB-record sixth consecutive World Series game with a home run, his streak dating back to 2021 with Atlanta. The Dodgers’ attempt at a sweep fizzled with a third-inning grand slam by Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe and eventually turned into an 11-4 blowout, not exactly a surprise considering Roberts stayed away from using his best relievers in hopes of keeping them fresh for a potential Game 5.
Game 4 marked the Dodgers’ fourth all-bullpen effort of the postseason, a staggering number for a team with as much talent as Los Angeles. Consider the names on L.A.’s injured list come October. Longtime ace and future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw made only seven starts before a toe injury ended his season. Tyler Glasnow, acquired to help anchor the rotation over the winter, never returned from a mid-August elbow injury. Stone, the Dodgers’ best starter this season, was out. So was Dustin May after an esophageal tear. Emmet Sheehan, River Ryan and Tony Gonsolin all were on the shelf following Tommy John surgery, and the Dodgers had signed Ohtani, MLB’s first two-way player in nearly a century, knowing he wouldn’t pitch in 2024 because of elbow reconstruction.
Losing a rotation-and-a-half worth of starting pitchers would have torpedoed any other team. Los Angeles had figured out how to weather the deficiency, with Roberts and pitching coach Mark Prior puppeteering their 13-man pitching staff without excessive fatigue or overexposure to Yankees hitters. It was a delicate balance, one they feared could collapse if Game 5 went the wrong way.
AROUND 3 P.M. on Wednesday, Walker Buehler boarded the Dodgers’ team bus to Yankee Stadium, looked at general manager Brandon Gomes and said: “I’m good tonight if you need me.” Two nights earlier, Buehler had spun magic in Game 3, shutting down New York in five scoreless innings. He was scheduled to throw a between-starts bullpen session; if he needed to forgo it to instead throw in a World Series game, he was ready.
Buehler is 30 and coming off the worst regular season of his career, winning just one of his 16 starts and posting a 5.38 ERA. He missed all of 2023 after undergoing his second Tommy John surgery and returned a much lesser version of the cocksure right-hander whose postseason badassery earned him a reputation as one of baseball’s finest big-game pitchers. His fastball lacked life and his breaking balls sharpness, and with free agency beckoning, Buehler had looked positively ordinary.
This was October, though, and the month has always brought out something different in him. He dotted his fastball in all four quadrants of the strike zone in Game 3, flummoxing Yankees hitters. It revved past them with the sort of carry he displayed over four shutout innings against the Mets in the NLCS. Back, too, was Buehler’s self-assuredness. Just in case Gomes and the rest of the Dodgers’ staff didn’t understand what he meant, Buehler reiterated at the stadium: “If things get a little squirrelly, then I’ll be ready.”
The game was all Yankees to start. Judge hit his first home run of the series in the first inning. Jazz Chisholm Jr. followed with another. An RBI single from Verdugo in the second inning chased Flaherty after he had recorded just four outs. For the second consecutive night, Roberts would need to lean on his bullpen. He went into break-glass-in-case-of-emergency mode. Left-hander Anthony Banda escaped a bases-loaded jam in the second. Ryan Brasier allowed a third-inning leadoff home run to Giancarlo Stanton. Michael Kopech pitched the fourth and wriggled out of a first-and-second-with-one-out situation.
In the meantime, Cole was cruising. He held the Dodgers hitless through four innings. Hernández broke that streak with a leadoff single in the fifth. Edman lined a ball to center that clanked off Judge’s glove, his first error on a fly ball since 2017. After Volpe fielded a ground ball and tried to nab the lead runner at third, Hernández almost Eurostepped into his throwing lane, a brilliant bit of baserunning that illustrated the difference between Los Angeles’ and New York’s fundamentals. Volpe bounced the throw for a second error in the inning, loading the bases.
Cole bore down, striking out Lux and Ohtani, and Betts squibbed a ball at 49.8 mph toward Yankees first baseman Anthony Rizzo. Even with the English spinning the ball away from the first-base bag, Rizzo likely could have tagged first to end the inning. He expected to flip the ball to Cole, who anticipated Rizzo would take the out himself. Once Rizzo realized Cole had not covered the bag, he shuffled toward first. Betts beat him there, and the mental blunder gave the Dodgers their first run of the day.
Freeman served a single on an inner-third, two-strike, 99.5 mph fastball — the hardest pitch Cole threw all season — to center for two more runs. And on another 1-2 pitch that caught too much of the plate, Teoscar Hernandez drove the ball 404 feet to center field. Because it hopped against the wall instead of over it, Freeman hauled all the way from first to home. Just like that, a 5-0 advantage had evaporated into a 5-5 tie.
Yankee Stadium, minutes earlier a madhouse, flatlined. Buehler had adjourned to the weight room, loosening his arm with a yellow plyometric ball. He saw Slater, who works out during the game to calm his nerves.
“Is it squirrelly yet?” Buehler asked.
It was squirrelly, all right. Friedman had come downstairs to consult with the rest of the front office about the logistics of finding a lie-flat airplane seat to fly Yamamoto back to Los Angeles ahead of the team for a potential Game 6. Now, instead of expending energy on that, they focused on how the Dodgers would possibly secure the final 15 outs of the game if they could steal a lead.
Inside the dugout, Roberts and Prior were doing the same. They were counting on left-hander Alex Vesia for more than one inning. With his pitch count run to 23 after weathering a bases-loaded situation by getting Gleyber Torres to fly out to right field, Vesia was done after the fifth. Buehler had returned to the dugout, and Prior asked whether he had thrown all day. No, Buehler said. He offered his services to Roberts, who told him to head to the bullpen, which he did at 10:08 p.m. When Buehler arrived, he saw Brent Honeywell, whose 7⅔ innings in the NLCS had helped keep the Dodgers’ bullpen fresh, and Joe Kelly, the veteran not on the roster because of an injury.
“What the f— are you doing here?” Honeywell said.
“I just came out here to hang with you and Joe,” Buehler said.
Brusdar Graterol, the Dodgers’ sixth pitcher of the night, walked the first two hitters in the sixth and allowed the Yankees to take a 6-5 lead on a Stanton sacrifice fly. After a third walk left runners on first and second, Roberts summoned Blake Treinen, the Dodgers’ best reliever, to face Volpe, who grounded out to second on a full count.
“I owed it to them to exhaust every possible resource to give them the best chance to win the game,” Roberts said. “At that point, I’m just counting outs.”
The math was not in his favor. Left in the bullpen were the Game 4 starter, rookie Ben Casparius, and Honeywell, who had gotten tagged for four runs the previous night, along with veteran Daniel Hudson, who had surrendered Volpe’s grand slam. Treinen took care of the seventh in order, and the Dodgers greeted Yankees reliever Tommy Kahnle rudely, loading the bases with two singles and a four-pitch walk. Boone signaled for closer Luke Weaver, who had pitched in Games 3 and 4, and he worked the count full before Lux lofted a sacrifice fly to center field. Ohtani reloaded the bases on another error via catcher’s interference before the second sac fly of the inning, from Betts, gave Los Angeles a 7-6 advantage.
Roberts was ready. About 20 minutes earlier, Buehler had thrown five balls to the bullpen catcher to ensure his arm would be ready. It felt fresh. Hudson began warming up as well, and Buehler later rejoined him. Roberts wanted to stick with Treinen as long as he could, and the decision looked fateful after Judge doubled and Chisholm walked. Roberts, not Prior, walked to the mound. A pitching change seemed imminent. He considered putting Hudson into the game to face Stanton, whose seven home runs this October set a Yankees postseason record.
Roberts did not realize that Hudson’s forearm was screaming as he warmed up. Hudson had fashioned a 15-year major league career despite two Tommy John surgeries within one calendar year from 2012 to 2013, typically a career ender for pitchers. Forearm tightness is a telltale sign of elbow troubles, and Hudson foresaw catastrophe if Roberts called on him to pitch.
“If Doc brought me in,” Hudson said, “I was going to blow out again.”
When Roberts arrived at the mound, he put his hands on Treinen’s chest.
“I just wanted to feel his heartbeat and just kind of look him in the eye and say, ‘What do you got?'” Roberts said. “And he said, ‘I want him.’ And so I said, ‘All right, you got this hitter.’ Because my intention was for him to get one hitter.”
On a middle-middle first-pitch sinker, Stanton sent a lazy fly ball to short right field. Roberts planned to hook Treinen there. Treinen avoided eye contact with Roberts. Out of the corner of his eye, Roberts saw Freeman.
“I give Freddie credit,” Roberts said. “Freddie was waving me off. He kind of subtly kind of said, ‘Hey, let him stay in.’ So then I trusted the players, and Blake made a pitch.”
He struck out Rizzo on a backfoot slider, his 42nd pitch of the night, and bounded off the mound and into the dugout, lead secure. Roberts knew his next move. He was going to use his projected Game 7 starter as his Game 5 closer and win the damn World Series.
When the bullpen door swung open in the ninth inning and Buehler jogged to the mound, his wife, McKenzie, sitting in the stands, started to sob. Their baby daughter, Finley, was asleep on McKenzie’s shoulder, and the tension of the moment was eating at her, and the tears didn’t stop — not after Volpe grounded out to third, not after Austin Wells swung over a full-count curveball and not after Verdugo flailed at a 77.5 mph curveball in the dirt that won the Dodgers a World Series that 29 other professional, billion-dollar organizations would’ve liked to have won.
Buehler exulted. His teammates swarmed him. Every time the Dodgers win a series, Buehler fetches his phone, opens Instagram and captions a triumphant photo with the same two words, all caps: WHO ELSE. He means the Dodgers, yes, but there’s more to it, this manifestation of the best version of himself in October, something with which Freeman and his fellow champions are familiar.
“That’s how I feel about myself,” Buehler said. “Who else is going to do it? Who else is going to be out there? Who else is supposed to do this? We’ve got 30 guys that believe that same way. And I was just the one in the spot to do it.”
ADRENALINE STILL FLOWING, booze serving as a mighty analgesic, Freddie Freeman walked around the Dodgers’ clubhouse around 2 a.m. with only a slight limp and little sign of pain in his side. He sheathed his middle finger because the Dodgers had given theirs to all of those who called 2020 a Mickey Mouse title and suggested they couldn’t win a real one.
“He couldn’t even walk two days ago,” Chelsea said. “Getting out of bed, literally yesterday, he looked like he was 100 years old.”
On Wednesday night, into Thursday morning, onto the plane ride back to Los Angeles, Freeman felt like a kid. Like Ohtani, Freeman came to Los Angeles for this. To win. To feel greatness. If the price of that is the return of pain that eventually will subside, he gladly paid it.
“I gave myself to the game, to the field,” Freeman said. “I did everything I could to get onto that field. And that’s why this is really, really sweet. I’m proud of the fact that I gave everything I could to this team and I left it all out there. That’s all I try to do every single night. When I go home and put my head on that pillow, I ask if I gave everything I had that night. And usually it’s a yes. One hundred percent of the time it’s a yes. But this one was a little bit sweeter because I went through a lot. My teammates appreciated it. The organization appreciated it. And to end it with a championship makes all the trying times before games, what I put myself through to get on the field, worth it.”
He did it for Buehler, who walked around shirtless inside the clubhouse and on the field, trying and failing to avoid champagne-and-beer showers, including one from Ohtani that doused the cigar in Buehler’s mouth. “Shohei,” he said. “This is a Cuban!” Buehler beamed at what he had done — what they had done — to fortify the external validation the Dodgers had held internally for four years.
“I still very much see this as the second one. I don’t see them very differently,” Buehler said. “But do it on the road, in New York, against the Yankees. It’s emphatic.”
He did it for Kiké Hernández, who, with the flag of Puerto Rico wrapped around his shoulders, said: “What are they going to say now? That this one doesn’t count?” And for Ohtani, who knows how hard baseball is more than anyone and still had the temerity to say: “Let’s do this nine more times.” And for everyone else in the organization, including Kershaw, who at 36 has been with the Dodgers organization for half his life.
Just after the presentation of the commissioner’s trophy on the field, Kershaw looked at his 9-year-old daughter, Cali, and tried to explain that they were finally going to get their parade, the one COVID-19 stole from them.
“All the people get to celebrate,” Kershaw said. “Isn’t that awesome?”
“Are you crying?” Cali said.
“No, I’m not crying,” Kershaw said. “Happy tears. Happy tears. OK. I’m done crying. I’m done crying.”
He stopped and looked around. Kershaw wants to pitch again, for the Dodgers, because however others view the organization, it represents home.
“I stopped caring about what other people that weren’t a part of it thought a long time ago,” Kershaw said. “It felt real to me. So I’m going to always have that one. But we get to have a parade. We’re going to get to do a parade in L.A. on Friday. Basically a culmination of those two championships. It’s going to be incredible. I’ve always wanted to have a parade. I’ve always wanted to do that. I feel like I missed out on it in 2020. So I think it’s going to be pretty awesome.”
Freeman did it for himself, too. For him, this is just the beginning. Some of the injured starters will return next season, and the Dodgers will enter the season as favorites to become the first back-to-back World Series winners since the Yankees won three straight championships from 1998 to 2000. Brian Cashman was the general manager of those teams, and he walked through the bowels of Yankee Stadium to the Dodgers’ clubhouse to congratulate Friedman. While he was waiting, Freeman walked by.
“Congrats, man,” Cashman said. “Hell of a series.”
It was. Maybe not the dream series of seven games or even the last one in which the Dodgers and Yankees met for a title. That one, in 1981, lasted six games, with the first five all decided by three or fewer runs, and was also won by the Dodgers. It included a Game 3 started by Fernando Valenzuela, the Dodgers legend who died last week. His presence will be felt on Friday — what would have been his 64th birthday — along the 45-minute parade route, a celebration of all things Dodgers.
The merriment Wednesday stretched deep into the night. On the clubhouse speakers, Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” played, an appropriate soundtrack. The Padres weren’t. The Mets weren’t. The Yankees weren’t.
Nobody is like these Dodgers, champions of the baseball world.
-
Chris Low
Close
Chris Low
ESPN Senior Writer
- College football reporter
- Joined ESPN.com in 2007
- Graduate of the University of Tennessee
-
Mark Schlabach
Close
Mark Schlabach
ESPN Senior Writer
- Senior college football writer
- Author of seven books on college football
- Graduate of the University of Georgia
Spring ball is nearly here, and we’re breaking everything down in the SEC. Even though there has been an influx of teams canceling their spring games, that doesn’t mean the storylines and players are any less interesting.
How will Kalen DeBoer fare in Year 2 in Tuscaloosa? DeBoer led the Tide to a 9-4 record last season, but it wasn’t enough to reach the College Football Playoff, which will certainly be the expectation come this fall. Can Florida’s DJ Lagway find some dependable receivers? And of course, how will Arch Manning do as he takes over the Longhorns’ offense at QB1?
Here’s a look at the top storyline, a position of intrigue and a player to watch for every SEC team as spring camps get underway.
2024 record: 9-4
Spring storyline: After going 9-4 in Alabama’s first season without Nick Saban since 2006, there’s going to be tremendous pressure on coach Kalen DeBoer to get the Crimson Tide back to the College Football Playoff in his second year. The Tide should have one of the better defenses in the SEC, so all eyes will be on the offense, especially the quarterback position, this spring. The good news for DeBoer: Ryan Grubb, who helped him guide Washington to the CFP National Championship game at the end of the 2023 season, is back on his staff after spending last season with the Seattle Seahawks. Grubb will return to calling plays, while Nick Sheridan will move to quarterbacks coach.
Position of intrigue: With Jalen Milroe bypassing his senior season to enter the NFL draft, Ty Simpson is probably the favorite heading into spring practice. But Simpson will be pushed by Austin Mack, who originally signed with Washington, and freshman Keelon Russell, who enrolled early in January. Simpson, a junior, had 50 attempts with a touchdown the past three seasons. Russell, from Duncanville, Texas, was the No. 1 dual-threat passer in the 2025 ESPN 300 and is one of the highest-rated prospects to ever sign with the Tide. As a senior at Duncanville (Texas) High in 2024, Russell passed for 4,177 yards with 55 touchdowns and five interceptions.
Player to watch: Alabama’s offensive line cut its sacks allowed from 49 in 2023 to 24 in 2024. The Tide have some nice pieces coming back in left tackle Kadyn Proctor, center Parker Brailsford and right guard Jaeden Roberts. Wilkin Formby, a homegrown product of Northridge High in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is going to be asked to take over at right tackle. Elijah Pritchett, transferred to Nebraska after struggling mightily at the spot last season. — Mark Schlabach
2024 record: 7-6
Spring storyline: After the Razorbacks lost six games or more for the third straight season in 2024, it seems like another big year for embattled coach Sam Pittman. It won’t be easy against one of the most difficult schedules in the FBS — road games at Ole Miss, Tennessee, LSU and Texas and home contests against Notre Dame, Texas A&M, Auburn and Missouri. There was plenty of turnover on the roster, with 25 scholarship players leaving, including several key contributors. The Hogs’ focus this spring is finding their 22 best players and building depth behind them.
Position of intrigue: Pittman is an old-school offensive line coach at heart, and he knows Arkansas is going to have do a better job protecting quarterback Taylen Green, who was sacked 32 times in 2024. The Hogs gave up 36 overall, which ranked 114th in the FBS. The Razorbacks brought in five FBS transfers and another lineman from junior college. Tackles JacQawn McRoy (Oregon) and Corey Robinson II (Georgia Tech) might be the biggest additions. McRoy is nicknamed “Shaq” because of his towering 6-foot-8, 375-pound frame.
Player to watch: The Razorbacks need help at wide receiver after Andrew Armstrong departed for the NFL and Isaiah Sategna transferred to Oklahoma. Arkansas added four transfer receivers, and former UAB standout Kam Shanks led the FBS with 329 punt return yards and two punt return touchdowns in 2024. He also added a team-high 62 receptions for 656 yards and six scores. The Hogs will also get their first looks at receivers Courtney Crutchfield (Missouri), Raylen Sharpe (Fresno State) and O’Mega Blake (Charlotte) this spring. — Schlabach
2024 record: 5-7
Spring storyline: After the Tigers posted a losing record in consecutive seasons under coach Hugh Freeze, things are getting a bit restless (again) on the Plains. With 15 FBS transfers joining the team through the portal, some are projecting Auburn to be one of the most improved teams in the FBS in 2025. For that to happen, however, Auburn’s offense will have to be much better, especially at quarterback. The Tigers averaged only 13.3 points in their seven losses in 2024. The Tigers will play another challenging schedule, including early road games at Baylor, Oklahoma and Texas A&M.
Position of intrigue: Quarterback transfer Jackson Arnold will be under the microscope this spring after he transferred to Auburn from Oklahoma. The No. 3 overall prospect in the 2023 ESPN 300, Arnold lost his starting job for three games at OU last season. He reclaimed it and started the final five regular-season contests. Arnold completed 62.6% of his passes for 1,421 yards with 15 total touchdowns in 2024. He ranked 15th among SEC quarterbacks in total QBR (47.8). The Tigers signed Deuce Knight, the No. 2 dual-threat quarterback in the ESPN 300, and Ashton Daniels, who will arrive from Stanford this summer.
Player to watch: Georgia Tech transfer Eric Singleton Jr. was one of the most coveted players in the transfer portal. He caught 104 passes for 1,468 yards and scored 10 touchdowns in his first two seasons with the Yellow Jackets and averaged 12.8 yards per touch as a receiver, rusher and returner in 2024. With Cam Coleman and Malcolm Simmons returning, and former Wake Forest receiver Horatio Fields transferring to Auburn, the Tigers should be loaded at receiver. — Schlabach
2024 record: 8-5
Spring storyline: Embattled Gators coach Billy Napier completely flipped the narrative on his future at Florida by guiding his team to four straight victories to finish with an 8-5 record in 2024. That winning streak included upsets of then-No. 22 LSU and then-No. 9 Ole Miss. Much of the optimism is because of quarterback DJ Lagway, who was 6-1 as the starter as a freshman, and a veteran offensive line. Lagway threw for 1,915 yards with 12 touchdowns and nine interceptions. Florida will play another brutal schedule in 2025 with road games at LSU, Miami, Texas A&M and Ole Miss and a neutral-site contest against Georgia.
Position of intrigue: Finding Lagway dependable targets on the perimeter will be a focus this spring. Top receivers Elijhah Badger and Chimere Dike departed for the NFL, and Eugene Wilson III is coming back from season-ending hip surgery. Receivers Vernell Brown III, Dallas Wilson and Naeshaun Montgomery were three of Florida’s highest-ranked signees, and J. Michael Sturdivant (UCLA) was one of the top pass catchers in the portal.
Player to watch: Florida’s strength coach called linebacker Aaron Chiles an “alien” before his freshman season, because of his exceptional work in the weight room. With Shemar James leaving for the NFL draft, Chiles and Myles Graham will have a chance to make an impact on defense this season. Graham had 30 tackles and one sack in 2024; Chiles had 23 tackles with one sack. — Schlabach
2024 record: 11-3
Spring storyline: Much of Georgia’s focus this spring will be focused on its offense, which struggled to catch the ball and run it when it mattered in 2024. The Bulldogs went 11-3, won an SEC championship and reached the CFP last season. But Georgia’s offensive production slipped mightily — it scored 31.5 points per game (after averaging 40.1 in 2023) and ranked next-to-last in the SEC with 124.4 rushing yards. Georgia will be breaking in four new starting offensive linemen and a new quarterback. Newcomers will also be counted on to improve an inconsistent receiver corps.
Position of intrigue: Georgia’s offensive line was expected to be one of the best units in the FBS in 2024, but it struggled to create holes in the running game and protect the quarterback. Four starters are gone, including center Jared Wilson and All-American guard Tate Ratledge. Earnest Greene III and Monroe Freeling have a lot of experience at tackle, and Micah Morris has been a mainstay at guard. Drew Bobo and Daniel Calhoun are the favorites to take over at center and right guard, respectively.
Player to watch: No position on the team was criticized more in 2024 than Georgia’s receivers. The Bulldogs led Power 4 conference teams in dropped passes, and top receivers Arian Smith and Dominic Lovett left for the NFL. Georgia brought in two high-profile transfers, Zachariah Branch (USC) and Noah Thomas (Texas A&M), and Talyn Taylor and C.J. Wiley are two highly regarded freshman receivers. Branch had 1,863 all-purpose yards during his two seasons with the Trojans, including two kicks returned for touchdowns in 2023. He caught 78 passes for 823 yards and three scores. — Schlabach
2024 record: 4-8
Spring storyline: After the Wildcats limped to a 4-8 record and won only one SEC game in 2024, which ended the program’s eight-year streak of competing in a bowl game, coach Mark Stoops is stressing a return to its blue-collar culture. Entering his 13th season at Kentucky, Stoops wants his team to play physically on both sides of the ball and cut down the mistakes that plagued it last season. The Wildcats brought in 20 players from the transfer portal, and many of them will be counted on to shore up the line of scrimmage on offense and defense. Rebuilding the receiver corps will also be a priority in the spring.
Position of intrigue: The Wildcats have been at their best under Stoops when they’ve controlled the line of scrimmage with a strong offensive line. The “Big Blue Wall” wasn’t as effective in 2024, as the Wildcats ranked 111th in the FBS in sacks allowed (35) and 81st in rushing (145.6 yards). Kentucky added five transfer offensive linemen, including projected starting left tackle Shiyazh Pete (New Mexico State), right tackle Alex Wollschlaeger (Bowling Green) and center Evan Wibberley (Western Kentucky).
Player to watch: Kentucky’s passing game wasn’t much of a threat in 2024, as it ranked 112th in the FBS in passing (184.8) and threw more interceptions (17) than touchdowns (15). The Wildcats are hoping they’ll get more from sixth-year senior Zach Calzada, who previously played at Texas A&M, Auburn and FCS program Incarnate Word. Last season, he passed for 3,744 yards with 40 total touchdowns. — Schlabach
2024 record: 9-4
Spring storyline: When quarterback Garrett Nussmeier opted to return to LSU after throwing for 4,052 yards with 29 touchdowns in 2024, the Tigers became an SEC title and CFP contender. Coach Brian Kelly’s mission this offseason became clear: surround Nussmeier with proven playmakers and improve a defense that held his team back in his first three seasons. The Tigers added receivers Nic Anderson (Oklahoma) and Barion Brown (Kentucky) and a couple of key offensive line transfers. On defense, pass rushers Patrick Payton (Florida State) and Jack Pyburn (Florida) and defensive backs Mansoor Delane (Virginia Tech) and Tamarcus Cooley (NC State) were key additions.
Position of intrigue: Nussmeier played behind one of the SEC’s best offensive lines in 2024, and now the Tigers will have to replace four starters, including star tackles Will Campbell and Emery Jones Jr. It won’t be easy. The Tigers added former Northwestern guard Josh Thompson and Virginia Tech center Braelin Moore to fill holes. Tyree Adams and Weston Davis will probably get the first opportunities at the tackle spots.
Player to watch: The Tigers lost top edge rushers Bradyn Swinson and Sai’vion Jones, who combined for 13 sacks in 2024. LSU invested heavily in bringing in Payton, Pyburn and Jimari Butler (Nebraska). Payton was the 2022 ACC Defensive Rookie of the Year and had 31½ tackles for loss and 16 sacks in three seasons with the Seminoles. His production dropped off dramatically on a bad FSU team in 2024. He had four sacks — three came in one game against California. — Schlabach
2024 record: 2-10
Spring storyline: The Bulldogs went 2-10 and didn’t win an SEC contest in coach Jeff Lebby’s first season, so there’s plenty of work to do in Starkville, Mississippi, this spring. The Bulldogs have to figure out a way to improve their porous defense, which ranked 118th in scoring (34.1 points), 130th against the run (216.9 yards), 105th in passing defense (239.5 yards) and 126th in total defense (456.4). The offense also took some heavy portal losses, including quarterback Michael Van Buren Jr. (LSU) and receivers Kevin Coleman Jr. (Missouri) and Mario Craver (Texas A&M).
Position of intrigue: The Bulldogs’ problems on defense started up front, and that’s the reason Lebby and his staff added seven defensive linemen in the portal. State’s defense generated only 10 sacks in 2024, second fewest in the FBS. Red Hibbler had 6½ sacks at NC State in 2023, then redshirted after four games last season. Will Whitson had 8½ tackles for loss and five sacks in two seasons at Coastal Carolina, and Malick Sylla had four sacks in three seasons at Texas A&M.
Player to watch: Quarterback Blake Shapen returned to Mississippi State after missing the final eight games with a shoulder injury. In four starts in 2024, he threw for 974 yards with eight touchdowns and one interception. After Van Buren transferred to LSU, the Bulldogs signed former FSU backup Luke Kromenhoek, who started two games in 2024. — Schlabach
2024 record: 10-3
Spring storyline: As Eliah Drinkwitz heads into his sixth season as coach at Missouri, the question is now: Can the Tigers take that next step (a big one) and make the playoff after winning at least 10 games each of the past two seasons? Drinkwitz doesn’t get enough credit for the job he has done in steadying the program and will be breaking in a new quarterback in 2025. Beau Pribula, a transfer from Penn State, is the favorite to replace Brady Cook. Pribula is one of several key transfers the Tigers will be counting on to make big impacts.
Position of intrigue: The Tigers will have to retool their offensive line after losing three starters, including projected first-round NFL draft pick Armand Membou at right tackle. The interior of Mizzou’s offensive line could be elite with Connor Tollison returning at center after injuring his knee at the end of last season and Cayden Green at left guard. Drinkwitz thinks the Tollison-Green interior combo could be the best in the country. Johnny Williams IV (West Virginia) and Keagen Trost (Wake Forest) are portal additions the Tigers hope can step in at the tackle positions.
Player to watch: Running back Ahmad Hardy comes over from ULM after putting together a terrific freshman season in the Group of 5 ranks. He rushed for 1,351 yards and 13 touchdowns and was especially effective after contact. Hardy and returnee Jamal Roberts should complement each other well in Drinkwitz’s offense. — Chris Low
2024 record: 6-7
Spring storyline: The Sooners finished next to last in the SEC in scoring offense last season (24 points per game), and their offense produced 20 points or fewer in all nine of their games against power conference opponents. It’s obviously a critical season for coach Brent Venables as he enters Year 4, and he hired Ben Arbuckle from Washington State to run the offense. Arbuckle brought with him quarterback John Mateer, who passed for more than 3,100 yards and rushed for more than 800 yards last season. The big change on defense is that Venables will take over playcalling duties.
Position of intrigue: The receiver position was ravaged with injuries last season. The good news is that redshirt senior Deion Burks is back after playing in only five games a year ago. Oklahoma scoured the portal for receivers and brought in four, including JaVonnie Gibson from Arkansas-Pine Bluff. Gibson had 70 catches for 1,215 yards and nine touchdowns last season. The Sooners also hope Jayden Gibson can bounce back after missing all of last season with a knee injury.
Player to watch: Some of the best news of the offseason was defensive end R Mason Thomas announcing he would return for his senior season. He led OU with 12.5 tackles for loss, 9 quarterback sacks and 11 hurries last season. Thomas’ return gives Venables a core of talented defenders returning. The defense is what kept the Sooners in games a year ago. — Low
2024 record: 10-3
Spring storyline: There was a playoff-or-bust feel to the Rebels’ season a year ago, and while they certainly looked like a playoff team at times, they were unable to recover from a home loss to Kentucky and then a road loss to Florida after beating Georgia soundly two weeks earlier. Lane Kiffin has elevated the program to top-10 status with at least 10 wins in three of the past four seasons. He’s called the “Portal King” for a reason, and the Rebels will again have to successfully plug in several new faces at key positions if they’re going to break through this season and make the playoff.
Position of intrigue: The defensive line a year ago was one of the best in the country. The Rebels finished second nationally in scoring defense and rushing defense and third in sacks. The bulk of that production up front is gone, including potential NFL first-round pick Walter Nolen at tackle and veteran pass rusher Princely Umanmielen. But sack machine Suntarine Perkins returns after recording 10.5 sacks a year ago, while 6-foot-7, 320-pound Zxavian Harris is poised to be the next dominant tackle in the SEC.
Player to watch: As quarterback Jaxson Dart quickly rises up NFL teams’ draft boards, the anticipation in Oxford is to see how well his successor, Austin Simmons, plays in his first season as the Rebels’ starter. Simmons was terrific when he filled in for a series against Georgia and led Ole Miss to a touchdown. The 6-foot-4, 215-pound sophomore is a perfect fit for Kiffin’s system. — Low
2024 record: 9-4
Spring storyline: Shane Beamer became only the second coach at South Carolina in the past 40 years to win nine regular-season games last season. (Steve Spurrier was the other.) The Gamecocks played their best football down the stretch and were a couple of plays and questionable calls away from making the playoff. They return two of the best young players in the country in redshirt sophomore quarterback LaNorris Sellers and sophomore edge rusher Dylan Stewart, but the key to the season will be how well the other players around those two stars develop.
Position of intrigue: Even with All-America defensive end Kyle Kennard headed to the NFL, South Carolina’s defensive front seven should again be stout. The Gamecocks finished in the top 20 nationally in scoring defense, yards per play and rushing defense. Stewart’s ability to get to the passer will be a major part of the 2025 defense, but Bryan Thomas Jr. also had 4.5 sacks last season. Transfers Gabriel Brownlow-Dindy at tackle (Texas A&M), Jaylen Brown at end (Missouri) and Justin Okoronkwo (Alabama) and Shawn Murphy (Florida State) at linebacker are on their way.
Player to watch: Being able to run the ball last season made a huge difference for South Carolina, and Sellers was a big part of that running game. But with Rocket Sanders gone, the Gamecocks needed a go-to running back, which is where Utah State transfer Rahsul Faison fits in. The 5-foot-11, 200-pound Faison rushed for 1,109 yards and averaged 5.6 yards per carry last season. — Low
2024 record: 11-3
Spring storyline: The Vols have knocked down several barriers under Josh Heupel. They’ve beaten Alabama twice and Florida twice in the past three seasons and made their first playoff appearance a year ago. The defense was the backbone of Tennessee’s run to the playoff, and several key pieces from that unit are gone and need to be replaced. Keeping defensive coordinator Tim Banks was a priority for Heupel. One of the big challenges for the Vols in Year 5 under Heupel will be playing better on the road, particularly in night games in hostile environments.
Position of intrigue: The young talent in Tennessee’s secondary is promising, and keeping safety Boo Carter from transferring was important. Carter may also play some offense in 2025. But at cornerback, it could be dicey. Jermod McCoy had an All-SEC season in 2024 after transferring from Oregon State. He tore his ACL in January, though, and is working toward getting back in time for the season open. And just recently, reports surfaced that the Vols’ other starting cornerback, Rickey Gibson III, plans to enter the spring transfer portal. If Gibson doesn’t change his mind, the Vols will be looking hard in the portal for cornerbacks.
Player to watch: Nico Iamaleava has been the most closely watched player at Tennessee since his first season in 2023 when he arrived with a reported $8 million NIL deal. Now in his third season on campus and second as starting quarterback, Iamaleava would seem poised to have a breakout year. He was solid a year ago in leading the Vols to the playoff. He needs to provide more firepower in the downfield passing game if they’re going to get back to the playoff in 2025. — Low
2024 record: 13-3
Spring storyline: It’s Arch Manning time on the Forty Acres, as the youngest of the First Family of Quarterbacks takes over for Quinn Ewers as QB1 for the Longhorns. Manning has as much upside as any quarterback in the country, but he has only started in two games. This spring gives the Longhorns the chance to fully incorporate him into the offense and build the offense around what he does best. Manning should be used to the glare of the spotlight, and it will only get brighter the rest of the way, but his exposure will be limited this spring because the Longhorns won’t be playing a spring game.
Position of intrigue: Texas’ offensive line will have a new look to it in 2025, but that doesn’t mean the Longhorns will be lacking in talent. They’ve recruited well up front, and even though senior guard DJ Campbell is the only returning starter, there’s still some experience. Senior guard Cole Hutson has played and is versatile enough to slide over to center. Former five-star recruit Brandon Baker is probably the favorite at left tackle, and the Longhorns were excited about what they saw from Trevor Goosby when he was forced into action at both left and right tackle last year in the postseason.
Player to watch: The Longhorns will be loaded with talent at the edge rusher positions, and sophomore Colin Simmons has a chance to be one of most dynamic defenders in the country after racking up nine sacks and forcing three fumbles last season as a true freshman. There are very few ready-made players when they step onto campus for the first time. Simmons was one of those players. — Low
2024 record: 8-5
Spring storyline: Last impressions always seem to count for more in college football, and Texas A&M in its first season under Mike Elko lost four of its last five games a year ago. It was a disappointing close to the season after the Aggies won seven straight heading into November and were seemingly in position to make a playoff run. Look for Elko to take on a heavier role on defense. He wasn’t pleased with the way the Aggies played down the stretch a year ago and brought in several newcomers on the defensive line, which is losing three of its top players to the NFL.
Position of intrigue: The Aggies are set to return all five starters in their offensive line, a unit that could use a boost from the running backs staying healthy this season. Despite knee injuries to both Rueben Owens and Le’Veon Moss last season, Texas A&M still finished second in the SEC in rushing with an average of 195.5 yards per game. Owens didn’t play until the last two games of the season after being injured in preseason camp, and Moss missed the last month of the season. Amari Daniels also returns at running back, meaning the Aggies’ running game could flourish in 2025.
Player to watch: This will be Marcel Reed‘s third year on campus, and the redshirt sophomore is Texas A&M’s future at quarterback. He had his ups and downs a year ago after shuffling between backup and starter, but played big on some big stages. Reed has said he wants to be more of a leader on this team, which makes this spring even more important for him. — Low
2024 record: 7-6
Spring storyline: There’s a reason the coaches voted Clark Lea SEC Coach of the Year last season. He led the Commodores to their best season (7-6) in more than a decade, took them to their first bowl game since 2018 and beat No. 1 Alabama for the first time since 1984, all this coming off a 2-10 season in 2023. The challenge now is building off such a solid season, creating more depth on the roster and continuing to develop players, which has been Lea’s strength. Some of the best news is that most of the key players are back, and there should be good carry-over with Lea calling defensive plays for the second straight year.
Position of intrigue: With Diego Pavia back at quarterback, he’ll also have his favorite receiving target back. Eli Stowers, an All-SEC selection at tight end a year ago and the Commodores’ top receiver, bypassed the NFL draft to return for another season in Nashville. Stowers will need some pass-catching help on the outside from receivers. It’s a big opportunity for Junior Sherrill to have a breakthrough season, while Trent Hudson reunites with Pavia after spending last season at Mississippi State. Hudson and Pavia played together at New Mexico State in 2023, and Hudson had 10 touchdowns.
Player to watch: Who else but Pavia, who sparked Vanderbilt’s revival last season and electrified the SEC with his fearless play at quarterback. He gets another shot at SEC defenses after passing for 2,293 yards and rushing for 801 yards last season. Pavia, who’s seemingly never out of a play, accounted for 28 touchdowns (20 passing and eight rushing). — Low
Sports
Passan: Two major league teams, two minor league ballparks — and what it says about the sport
THE SLOW, PROTRACTED death of the Oakland A’s played out over two decades, offering a fresh blueprint of how to torpedo a professional sports franchise. The slow, protracted march of the Tampa Bay Rays toward a similar outcome is playing out in real time. And both serve as warnings to the rest of the sport that when it comes to the pursuit of new stadiums, major league dreams can end up in minor league parks.
The A’s quest to secure a new stadium in the Bay Area repeatedly ended in failure. They eventually gave up and pivoted their attention to Las Vegas, where they plan to move for the 2028 season. In the meantime, they are asking to be called, simply, the A’s, even though they’ll spend the next three years squatting in West Sacramento, California.
While the destruction of Tropicana Field’s roof in October by Hurricane Milton forced the Rays to seek refuge for 2025 at a minor league stadium across the bay in Tampa, Florida, many of the same issues — chief among them a relationship with local politicians drowned by distrust — have left the Rays with a deal for a new stadium they could abandon any day and a future defined by its uncertainty.
For now, the teams find themselves in the same purgatory, caught between the stadiums they yearned to desert and the gleaming, billion-dollar palaces about which they fantasize. The A’s and Rays will spend the 2025 season playing in minor league ballparks about one-third the size of a standard Major League Baseball stadium.
Earlier this spring, commissioner Rob Manfred called the minor league parks “intimate” and “charming,” real estate euphemisms instantly recognizable to anyone who has looked at too-small houses and apartments. It’s not just the size of the ballparks, either. Temperatures in Sacramento regularly climb into the triple digits in the summer, and Sutter Health Park lacks the roof of big league parks in other scorching cities. In lieu of playing at the Trop, the Rays will spend 2025 at the open-air Steinbrenner Field and contend with summer rains that threaten to destabilize their schedule.
The A’s and Rays are cautionary tales of what happens when big, complicated challenges are met with half-measures and inaction — and reminders to teams with unsettled stadium issues in places like Chicago and Kansas City, Missouri, that the longer they take to reach resolution, the messier these situations get. With every city council meeting that ends with no deal, every local voting result that kicks the can down the road to the next election, every ballpark rendering torn up before a shovel ever enters the dirt, the likelihood of best-laid plans being replaced by worst-case scenarios multiplies.
For the Chicago White Sox and Kansas City Royals — two teams angling for public money to help finance new stadiums — there are countless lessons to learn about the fragility of deals and their capacity to go sideways. Already there has been resistance to the White Sox’s request of $1 billion to help build a new stadium in the South Loop, and voters in Kansas City last year rejected a sales-tax extension that would have helped fund a downtown ballpark. Public cynicism over using tax dollars to fund billionaire owners’ real estate plays has made turning visions of a new stadium into reality that much more difficult and the ramifications of letting a potentially volatile situation decay that much greater.
The upshot of stadium volatility goes beyond the teams and extends to the league. While Manfred has said he wants the league to expand from 30 to 32 teams before his planned retirement in January 2029, the instability of the A’s and Rays has prompted MLB to pause laying out any expansion timeline.
For all the good in the game in Manfred’s time as commissioner — the generation of notable stars, the success of the pitch clock, the excellent early returns on the automated ball-strike challenge system — the sight of two big league teams existing in small stadiums is rich with subtext. And with a labor negotiation expected to threaten games in 2027, a widespread dissatisfaction among fans about MLB’s competitive balance and a local-television landscape in need of overhaul, the challenges in Manfred’s final four years as commissioner go well beyond the perception that comes with shrunken stadiums.
Teams have weathered minor league ballparks before. The Toronto Blue Jays called Buffalo, New York, home in the 2020 and 2021 seasons because of COVID restrictions. The Montreal Expos spent about a quarter of their games in 2003 and 2004 in Puerto Rico before moving to Washington, D.C. The A’s played six games in Las Vegas in 1996 because of unfinished renovations at the Coliseum. Never, though, have two teams simultaneously endeavored to make big league ball work without big league stadiums. When the Rays and A’s play their home openers in temporary residences later this month, it will mark uncharted territory for the sport.
FROM THE PERCH of I-175 just south of downtown St. Petersburg, Tropicana Field looks like a relic, a building whose inevitable fate is condemnation. Milton shredded 18 of the 24 fiberglass panels that comprised the structure’s roof, and the beams that once supported them jut into the city’s skyline. The Trop opened in 1990, and the hallmarks of its antiquity remain, highlighted by the lettering spelling out TROPICANA FIELD in Hobo typeface on the side of the stadium: a bygone font for a bygone edifice.
Three months before Milton and Hurricane Helene devastated the Tampa Bay area, the Rays finally believed that after 17 years of searching for a new stadium, they had found their future home: right where they’d been all along. On July 31, Rays officials and a group of local luminaries — including St. Petersburg mayor Ken Welch — gathered to announce a deal for a new $1.3 billion stadium on the same site as the Trop.
The franchise would finally have a home befitting of a club that has won more games than any team except the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees since that search began in 2008. Between the gleaming 30,000-seat stadium and the mixed-use development around the ballpark, the team would mimic the approach of the Atlanta Braves: leveraging baseball into a financial windfall from ownership of the surrounding land and businesses.
Optimism gushed from a news conference in which the parties celebrated a deal that would complement the Rays’ $700 million investment with $600 million in public funds for a stadium to open by 2028. All of the failed efforts — the $450 million waterfront plan in St. Petersburg hatched in 2007, the $900 million stadium in Tampa’s Ybor City neighborhood that held up for barely a month in 2018, the ill-fated efforts to spend half the season in Tampa and the other half in Montreal — were moot.
“We know the baseball team is going to be here,” Rays president Matt Silverman said that day, “and it’s going to be here forever.”
Forever didn’t even last a year. Today, the stadium is on the precipice of falling apart. The Rays have until March 31 to offer proof of their $700 million or abandon the deal. The latter would send the franchise into the sort of limbo not even the A’s have faced. Following a delay in approving bonds and a subsequent public fight with county politicians, the Rays said the stadium’s cost had increased significantly and requested additional public money to bridge the funding gap. Welch, the mayor who has been the foremost proponent of keeping the team in St. Petersburg, has said if the deal falls apart, the city will not revisit another. If that happens, there is no clear path to a stadium being built in Tampa. Rays owner Stuart Sternberg could sell the team. But Manfred has been vociferous in saying he does not want MLB to abandon the Tampa Bay area, even if the status quo is untenable.
Compounding the lack of clarity is the state of the Trop. The city’s agreement with the Rays calls for it to replace the stadium’s roof. Repairs are estimated to cost more than $50 million. The city said work could be done in time for the 2026 season, a notion the Rays contested before reversing course. Already the team’s deal with the city for the Trop has been altered because of a clause that extends the contract by a year for every season the team doesn’t play at the stadium. If it is not repaired by 2026, the agreement could run through 2029.
The specter of further ugliness — litigation if the team walks away from the deal and the potential slowdown of Tropicana Field repairs — leave the Rays a literal team without a home. Their executives are working out of rented office space in St. Petersburg. The Yankees retrofitting Steinbrenner Field for an AL East rival and moving their Single-A team, the Tampa Tarpons, to the complex’s backfields is a one-year-only favor. Rays players, already on alert due to the team’s propensity to trade those nearing free agency, wonder aloud what the lack of a home for 2026 and beyond means for their future.
With no obvious solution, multiple prominent Tampa-area businesspeople have started to put together ownership groups intent on attempting to buy the team, though no deal is close, sources told ESPN. The groups’ belief, according to sources, is that Hillsborough County, where Tampa is located, would be more amenable to offering public funding for a new stadium to a local ownership group. (Sternberg lives on the outskirts of New York City.) The 2025 season could serve as a proof of concept, with the Rays expecting to pack the 11,026-seat stadium far more often than they did the Trop, which typically holds games with more of its 42,735 seats empty than filled.
“If not for Steinbrenner Field and the Yankees, I don’t know what we would have done,” Silverman told ESPN. “The quick yes from Hal Steinbrenner gave us peace of mind when we really needed it. I think there’s real excitement for outdoor baseball in Tampa. The whole region is talking about it.”
Tampa, long regarded as a better fit to draw fans in the Tampa Bay area, will see 42 of the team’s first 65 games at home (a schedule stacking intended to avoid July and August, when rain regularly pelts the city). But it’s tempered by the potential for the team’s exodus from the region. In addition to a possible local ownership transfer, multiple groups weighing expansion bids have entertained the possibility of trying to buy the Rays from Sternberg, sources said. Doing so would allow a group to purchase a major league franchise for less than the expansion fee that Manfred estimated in 2021 at $2.2 billion. At the same time, it would require approval from MLB owners, a scenario fraught with potential peril on account of Manfred’s dictate to keep baseball in the Tampa Bay area.
For all the hope that the coming weeks and months will offer a well-defined path for the Rays to follow, it’s never that easy. One need only look at the tortuous journey of the A’s to see why.
IN EARLY JANUARY, A’s manager Mark Kotsay and four of the team’s core players trekked to Sacramento for a look at their future home. They scarfed down a five-course meal at a local restaurant, visited a local coffee shop, meandered around a park, took in a double-overtime win by their NBA brethren Kings and toured Sutter Health Park to see firsthand how their next three years would look.
While at the Kings game, one of the players, designated hitter Brent Rooker, finalized a five-year, $60 million contract extension, the third-largest deal ever given out by the A’s. The confluence of the visit and Rooker’s signing was the latest sign that the not-Oakland A’s planned to operate differently than the team that had caused such consternation with its abandonment of Oakland.
In the near-quarter-century since the A’s first looked to move from a decaying Oakland stadium whose disrepair regularly made national news, the combination of miserly ownership and politicians unwilling to meet the team’s demands led to what was once unthinkable: the A’s following the Raiders from Oakland to Las Vegas. The A’s final season in Oakland had a funereal air, with fans alternating between celebrating the rich history of the team’s half-century in the city and regaling owner John Fisher with expletives and boos over his handling of MLB’s first franchise relocation since the Montreal Expos absconded to D.C. in 2005.
Extending Rooker and handing the largest contract in franchise history to free agent right-hander Luis Severino — a three-year, $67 million deal that helped fulfill the team’s need to guarantee revenue-sharing money through increased spending — signaled a shift toward normalcy for an organization that had brought the plot of “Major League” to life, only without the happy ending. After the A’s agreed to a stadium deal in Las Vegas in 2023 amid simultaneous negotiations with Oakland — whose mayor, Sheng Thao, was later indicted on unrelated federal bribery and conspiracy charges — they focused on Sacramento, home of the San Francisco Giants’ Triple-A affiliate, as a temporary stopgap.
Rather than agree to a $97 million extension fee that would have allowed the A’s to stay at the Coliseum before moving to Las Vegas, they opted for Sacramento, which allowed the team to keep the majority of its $67 million-a-year local television contract. The A’s have sold 6,500 season tickets — including a three-year commitment for premium tickets — and expect to have plenty of sellouts in a stadium with 10,624 seats and a capacity of 14,014, including a standing-room option on the grass berms in left and right field.
Still, there are constant reminders that Sutter Health Park is a minor league ballpark cosplaying a major league stadium. MLB and the MLB Players Association mandated improvements throughout the park, including upgraded clubhouses, lighting, trainer’s rooms, weight rooms, a new batter’s eye and the installation of a grass field. Beyond the playing surface, the ballpark has features that wouldn’t normally fly in the majors, such as the clubhouses, batting cages and weight rooms — places where players often spend time during the game — being located past the outfield walls instead of attached to the dugout.
Even so, the A’s are focused on being adaptable to their new home. Kotsay, who spent four of his 17 big league seasons with the A’s and is entering his fourth season as manager, grew to love the Coliseum in spite of its flaws and hopes to do the same in Sacramento.
“Whether it was 3,000 or 7,000 in a midweek game, the energy was still great,” Kotsay said. “That’s the one thing that I can honestly say I’ll miss, because even though there may not have been a lot of fans in the stands, the passion that they brought for us through the years was incredible. But I’m excited about Sacramento. I don’t know really what to expect. I do know that we’ve sold the place out and that energy in itself will be awesome to witness.”
With the contract extension securing his future, Rooker bought a house in Sacramento. In his three years at Mississippi State, Rooker played at the Bulldogs’ Dudy Noble Stadium and LSU’s Alex Box Stadium and Arkansas’ Baum-Walker Stadium, all with capacities between 10,000 and 15,000, and lauded them for their atmosphere. It’s an environment he hopes the A’s — whose young core could keep them in contention in a wide-open American League West division — experience at their new home.
“It’s going to be obviously a unique environment, a different environment than we’re used to playing Major League Baseball games in,” Rooker said. “But we think it’s going to be people who are excited to be there and are there to support a new team … so, we’re looking forward to it.”
GROUND STILL HASN’T been broken on the A’s new stadium in Las Vegas, and if there’s a lesson to be taken from their trials and travails as well as the Rays’, it’s that nothing is done until shovels hit the dirt. Manfred said Fisher told him the stadium — whose cost has ballooned from $1.5 billion to $1.75 billion, with $380 million coming from the state of Nevada — is still scheduled to open in 2028.
Skepticism about the project persists. The nine-acre plot on the former site of the Tropicana hotel would be the smallest footprint for any major league stadium. Renderings of the stadium are missing a bullpen for the visiting team. The A’s intend to offer around 2,500 parking spaces — one-third of what Clark County code mandates, with one space for every four seats in the planned 30,000-seat stadium.
Flaws and all, the team is surging forward and expects to start construction over the summer on a futuristic-looking building that plans to feature seats closer to the field than any other MLB stadium. Not only would a groundbreaking constitute a triumph for Fisher’s maligned ownership, but it would also serve notice to other owners that the appeal of baseball remains strong enough to close a stadium deal, regardless of the ruin in its wake. At the same time, the cost to do so is profound. The A’s attempt to secure a stadium is a case study in dysfunction. The Rays face years of ugliness ahead. The White Sox and Royals have already encountered roadblocks in their efforts.
Manfred remains undaunted, arguing that “the reality of today’s economics is that either building or renovating a stadium almost by definition has to be a public-private partnership.” The Diamondbacks found success in doing so. Last week, the Arizona House of Representatives passed a bill to divert $200 million in tax money to help a $500 million-plus renovation of Chase Field, where the Diamondbacks have a lease that runs out in 2027.
Other teams simply opted to stay where they are. The Los Angeles Angels, who play in the fourth-oldest ballpark in baseball, renewed their lease of Angel Stadium through 2032, with a pair of options that can extend it to 2038. The Angels had sought to buy the land surrounding the stadium to potentially build a new one, but an FBI investigation revealed Anaheim mayor Harry Sidhu had funneled confidential information to the team in hopes of receiving $1 million in campaign contributions. He later pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges and is awaiting sentencing.
Manfred’s predecessor, Bud Selig, reinvigorated baseball throughout the 1990s and 2000s by encouraging what became a stadium boom. Those days are over, with the lessons of Oakland and Tampa Bay reminding teams of the manifold land mines around which they must tiptoe.
In almost everything it does, MLB moves at a languid pace. With the pitch clock and ABS, this behooved the league. With the collapse of the regional-sports-network model that provided billions of dollars annually for teams’ local television rights, it left the league compromised. With new stadiums, it’s clear: The longer the idea of one festers without closure, the likelier it is to see something major devolve into minor.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – New Houston Astros first baseman Christian Walker was scratched from the lineup for a spring training game Wednesday because of soreness in his left oblique.
Walker missed more than a month last season with Arizona because of a strained left oblique muscle. He joined the Astros on a $60 million, three-year contract during the offseason.
In his first four spring training games for Houston, Walker was 4 for 8 with three doubles. He also had two walks.
Adding a first baseman over the offseason was a priority for the Astros after struggling Jose Abreu was released less than halfway through a $58.5 million, three-year contract.
Walker, who turns 34 on March 28, hit .251 with 26 home runs and 84 RBIs in 130 games for the Diamondbacks last season. He won his third consecutive Gold Glove at first base.
In 832 big league games, Walker has hit .250 with 147 homers. All but 13 of those games came with Arizona over the past eight seasons, after his MLB debut with Baltimore in 2014 and 2015.
Walker had two stints on the injured list because of right oblique issues in 2021. He played 160 games in 2022 and 157 in 2023, hitting 69 homers and driving in 197 runs combined over those two seasons.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports11 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway