Freddie Freeman is always happy to return to Toronto, even if Blue Jays fans might not give him a warm reception this time around.
Freeman is a dual Canadian-American citizen who played for Canada at the 2017 and 2023 World Baseball Classics. However, he’s also one of the stars of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Blue Jays’ opponents in the World Series.
“I’m not so sure the Canadian fans, Blue Jays fans, will be cheering for me this time around like it was in the WBC the last couple of times,” Freeman said during a conference call with reporters. “But it is special.
“Every time I go there, I just have this feeling inside that I’m just a little bit closer to my mom. So I’m looking forward to it. I’m excited.”
Freeman’s father, Frederick, is from Windsor, Ont., and his late mother, Rosemary, was from Peterborough, Ont., but he was raised in Southern California after his parents moved to the United States for work. Freeman’s mother died of melanoma when he was 10.
He said his father will be travelling to Toronto this week as Rogers Centre will host Games 1 and 2 of the World Series on Friday and Saturday.
“Every time I go there, I always get this little envelope in my locker, and it’s always like, my third cousin has found photos in their garage and they bring them to me,” said Freeman. “So I love going back to Toronto.
“It’s a special place for obviously, my family and I, and every time I go back there, I feel a little bit closer to my mom. I’m looking forward to getting there.”
‘Loves the U.S., loves Canada’
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was taken aback Freeman would even suggest Blue Jays fans would give him a hard time.
“‘I’m just a little confused. Why? He praises his country of birth, and he has played for Team Canada,” said Roberts. “He was traded here. So, yeah, he’s a baseball player. Loves the U.S., loves Canada. He’s a heck of a player, heck of a person. An even better person.
“But yeah, I don’t know what the Blue Jays fans have in store for him, but I don’t think he’ll be fazed by it.”
Freeman is a nine-time all-star who hit .295 for L.A. this past season with 24 home runs and 90 runs batted in. He’s hitting .231 with a home run and an RBI so far this post-season.
He’s a two-time World Series champion with the Atlanta Braves in 2021 and then with the Dodgers last season, when he was named series MVP.
Despite all his previous success in the post-season, Freeman isn’t underestimating the Blue Jays.
“When you have a whole country that’s behind one team, that’s pretty amazing,” said Freeman. “What they’ve done, they’ve invested in their team, into that stadium, the visiting clubhouse, they’ve redone, so they’ve put a lot into the Toronto Blue Jays.
‘Exciting time’
“To just see the city come together and get to experience so much jubilation that they had [Monday], going to the World Series for the first time. I think it was 30-plus years; it’s an exciting time.”
Meanwhile, while Canadian fans of fellow Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani may feel divided, many of them say they will still cheer for the home team.
The Blue Jays were strong contenders to sign the two-way superstar in free agency before he agreed to a record 10-year, US$700-million contract with the Dodgers in 2023. Speculation that Ohtani was about to sign with the Jays hit feverish levels in December of that year amid reports that he was on a Toronto-bound private jet, which social media users tracked for hours, only to realize that it was not true.
Lise Hawkins, a member of Ohtani’s Canadian fan club, has been a lifelong supporter of the Blue Jays and said she became a fan of Ohtani when the team made its first attempt to recruit him in 2017.
“The Ohtani fan club started at that time as a way of courting him to let him know, ‘Look, there’s all this love of you in the city of Toronto,”‘ she said, adding that Ohtani’s fans in Toronto were “hugely disappointed” knowing he chose another team over the Jays for a second time in 2023.
“Not anger at him, not resentment, nothing like that at all, just sheer disappointment,” she said.
WATCH | Blue Jays reach the World Series for 1st time since 1993:
Blue Jays head to World Series
The Toronto Blue Jays are returning to the World Series for the first time since 1993 after defeating the Seattle Mariners 4-3 in the American League Championship Series.
Hawkins said she and other members of the fan club may not be able to attend the World Series games at the Rogers Centre because tickets are too expensive, but they will likely visit the stadium before Game 1 starts just to interact with other baseball fans.
“I am a Toronto Blue Jays fan, but I am an Ohtani fan — I’m not a Dodgers fan,” she said. “But in terms of my loyal following for a baseball team, I would still be aligned with the Toronto Blue Jays.”
Christine Takasaki, a program co-ordinator at the Japanese Canadian Culture Centre in Toronto, said she has respect for what Ohtani has achieved as a player, but she has been a Blue Jays fan almost her entire life — and that’s not going to change.
Takasaki said while the Jays have all the talent they need to defeat the Dodgers and win the World Series, having Ohtani in the lineup would have made it easier to win the title.
“If Ohtani had come here, it would have been, you know, a completely different team but it would have been an absolute amazing boon for the Toronto,” she said.
“He is a great player. He is fantastic…What he’s doing is unprecedented, you know, to be able to pitch at the level that he’s pitching and to be able to play and be a hitter at the [level].”
Dodgers announce starting pitchers
L.A. manager manager Dave Roberts also revealed his starting pitchers for the first two games of the World Series. Blake Snell will start Game 1 on Friday and Yoshinobu Yamamoto will follow in Game 2.
It’s a repeat of the pitching order the Dodgers used for the first two games of their four-game sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series.
Snell had 10 strikeouts over eight scoreless innings in Game 1 on Oct. 13. He became the first Dodgers pitcher to complete eight innings while allowing one hit or fewer in a post-season game.
Yamamoto pitched a three-hitter in Game 2 with the first Dodgers post-season complete game since 2004.
Roberts said the team hasn’t decided on starters for Games 3 and 4, which will be back at Dodger Stadium, but indicated Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani could follow in that order.
“I think we’re going to run the same rotation back, I think for sure for the first two,” he said.
