LOS ANGELES — Freddie Freeman knows this moment, this feeling, better than anyone. He understands the magnitude and the repercussions because he has lived them. A year ago, his walk-off grand slam to begin the 2024 World Series etched his name into Dodgers lore and his image into the minds and even onto the bodies of die-hard fans who wanted a permanent reminder of a swing that would live on forever. Some of them have since asked Freeman to sign their tattoos. One fan told Freeman that he was so moved by the experience of being present in the building with his kids for that historic occasion, he gave up drinking.
“You can change peoples’ lives,” Freeman realized then, “and create memories.”
On Monday night, back at Dodger Stadium on baseball’s biggest stage, at the end of one of the wildest games in World Series history, Freeman created more.
This time it was a solo shot, not a grand slam. It came in the 18th inning, not the 10th. But in the first Dodgers home game of the 2025 World Series, Freeman did it again.
Freddie Freeman walks off Game 3 of the World Series with a 406-foot blast to center field against the Blue Jays in the 18th inning. (Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
He became the first player in MLB history with multiple walk-off home runs in the Fall Classic when he ended Game 3, a six-hour, 39-minute marathon against the Blue Jays, with a 406-foot blast to center field, giving the Dodgers a 6-5 win and putting his team ahead 2-1 in the series.
“To have it happen again a year later, to hit another walk-off, it’s kind of amazing,” Freeman said. “Crazy.”
Tyler Glasnow threw the first pitch at 5:11 p.m. PT and Freeman hit the last one at 11:50, put both hands in the air as he rounded the bases, then disappeared into a familiar mob at home plate as Monday night bled into Tuesday morning.
“He’s the guy you want up,” said Clayton Kershaw. “Freddie just keeps taking the moment.”
Freeman is mobbed by Dodgers teammates at home plate after his game-winning home run. (Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
There were so many people to celebrate in the aftermath of Freeman’s latest World Series achievement, the Dodgers didn’t know what to do. Shohei Ohtani, who set a postseason record and tied an MLB record for any game by reaching base nine times, lifted his arms out wide as he ran toward left field to embrace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who ran in to greet him from the bullpen.
Yamamoto had thrown a complete game just two days prior. But as the innings piled up, he saw the trajectory of the game. He approached his coaches and told them he was ready. He began warming up, preparing to enter if the game went to the 19th.
“He’s my favorite player,” Dodgers reliever Justin Wrobleski told me afterward. “He’s the man. He’s just a dog. He does things that not a lot of people would do, and he wants to win. He’s a quiet dude, but he wants to win.”
So did the last pitcher to throw a pitch for the Dodgers, the 25-year-old journeyman who bought time for Freeman’s final heroics.
Reliever Will Klein did not make the roster for any previous series this October. He was traded from the Royals to the A’s last year, from the A’s to the Mariners in January, and from the Mariners to the Dodgers in June. He had not thrown more than 45 pitches in a game this year prior to Game 3.
But he was the last man standing in a bullpen that had been emptied after 14 innings.
“I was just going to go until I couldn’t,” said Klein, who never could have imagined he’d find himself where he was Monday night. “There were times when, like, you’re starting to feel down and you feel your legs aren’t there or your arm’s not there, and you’ve just got to be, like, ‘Well, who else is going to come save me?’”
Klein went four scoreless innings on 72 pitches to finish off the win. He hadn’t thrown that many pitches in a game since college. By the time he got back to the clubhouse and checked his phone, he hadn’t seen that many notifications in his life. Klein had even earned the admiration of Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax, who stopped by the Dodgers’ clubhouse in part to congratulate him.
“In the postseason, people talk about the superstars,” said manager Dave Roberts. “But a lot of times it’s these unsung heroes that you just can’t expect.”
Journeyman Will Klein pitched four scoreless innings to get the win in Game 3. (Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
Right after mobbing Freeman at the plate, many of the Dodgers’ stars then turned their attention to Klein. It was a moment he won’t forget.
“I never dreamed that anything like this would happen,” Klein said. “So, just having the guys like Kersh, Freddie, Shohei, Mookie [Betts], all those guys kind of celebrating me for a second there was just insane. I don’t think I could have dreamed a dream that good.”
“I don’t know how many times you see a guy hit a walk-off home run and the whole team is jumping around the pitcher,” added Max Muncy. “But he deserved it. For that performance he put on, he deserved every bit of that.”
The game had a little of everything. There were bad sends and flawless relays, terrific throws and baserunning blunders, majestic moonshots and agonizing errors, two maligned bullpens putting up a full game’s worth of zeroes and baseball’s behemoths going blow for blow. Every slip-up seemed to be remedied innings later by something extraordinary.
In the fourth, Dodgers second baseman Tommy Edman let a potential double-play grounder get under his glove, putting runners at the corners with nobody out to set up a go-ahead three-run homer from Alejandro Kirk. But Edman also later helped save the game in the ninth inning, when he tracked down a liner in short right field that had tipped off Freeman’s glove, turned and fired across the diamond to get Isiah Kiner-Falefa attempting to go first to third. And again in the 10th, when Edman retrieved a throw in the right-field corner from Teoscar Hernández, then fired home in time to get Davis Schneider at the plate on an ill-advised send from third-base coach Carlos Febles. Seven innings prior, the Dodgers had a similarly poor send that ended with Freeman tagged out at the plate.
Momentum shifted swiftly, at least for seven innings, before the offenses wore down.
“The bat starts feeling pretty heavy,” Muncy said.
“It pretty much drains you completely,” added Betts.
There were 19 pitchers used, the most ever in a postseason game. The Dodgers used 10, the most ever in a single World Series game. Glasnow, Anthony Banda, Wrobleski, Blake Treinen, Jack Dreyer and Roki Sasaki combined to throw the first nine for the Dodgers. Emmet Sheehan, Kershaw and World Series additions Edgardo Henriquez and Klein took down the last nine.
“The innings I pitched were no longer on the scoreboard,” said Wrobleski, who entered in the sixth. “That’s probably the craziest thing, when you look up and those innings aren’t there anymore. It’s a little weird, but it’s the best game I’ve been a part of.”
By the time Klein entered in the 15th, Wrobleski assumed what everyone else did.
“We’ve all kind of been there in that spot where it’s like, ‘Yeah, dude, you’re probably going to have to eat it here,’” Wrobleski told me. “Hats off to Klein. That was incredible.”
By the 16th, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. began snacking on an apple. Earlier in the night, he smiled as he rounded third base on a Bo Bichette single that ricocheted off the wall down the first-base line, then slapped his hand on home plate before Dodgers catcher Will Smith could apply the tag. It gave the Blue Jays a go-ahead run in the seventh before Ohtani’s second home run of the night evened the score in the bottom of the frame. It was Ohtani’s eighth home run of the playoffs, tying him with Corey Seager for the most in a single postseason in franchise history.
From there, 11 straight scoreless innings followed. It seemed like days had passed since Glasnow and Max Scherzer took the mound to start the game.
A fruit tray appeared in the home dugout in the 18th. By then, Ohtani had already reached base nine times, a feat no player had accomplished in a game since Stan Hack in 1942. Ohtani’s night started with a ground-rule double, a home run, an RBI double and another home run in his first four at-bats, making him the first player in over 100 years to record four extra-base hits in a World Series game.
He still had five more plate appearances to go. He was given a free pass in each of them, including a postseason record four intentional walks. Blue Jays manager John Schneider was not going to let Ohtani beat him.
That decision was prudent, as the hitters behind Ohtani consistently failed to deliver. The Dodgers won despite going 2-for-14 with runners in scoring position and leaving 18 runners on base.
The Blue Jays also had their chances.
One of the best came in the 12th, when they loaded the bases on Sheehan, who was running out of gas with two outs. Roberts called on Kershaw, who threw his fastest pitch of the year — 91.9 mph — before getting an inning-ending groundout on a 3-2 slider, cutting the tension and allowing the 52,654 fans in attendance to exhale a collective sigh of relief. They understand that any Kershaw appearance could be his last, though the lefty claimed that’s not going through his mind when he’s on the mound.
“I’m just trying to get that guy out,” Kershaw said. “But yeah, I mean, after the fact, it’s a lot of fun to have success when you know you’re close.”
In the 14th, Smith thought he ended the game when he connected with a 93-mph Eric Lauer fastball and drove it 383 feet out to center and 101.5 mph off the bat, only to then see it die at the wall along with the anticipation of everyone in attendance. The marine layer had swooped in. Similar swings followed, including a 383-foot flyout in the 16th from Hernandez.
The 18-inning marathon was the longest World Series affair since Game 3 of the 2018 Fall Classic, which also went 18 innings and ended with a Dodgers walk-off home run.
The man who hit that one against the Red Sox, Max Muncy, was due up third in the 18th inning on Monday night.
“As it started going on, it was starting to feel like déjà vu for me,” Muncy said. “I kind of thought the stars were starting to align again.”
It would not get to that point, as Freeman, who had a 379-foot flyout in the 13th and a 358-foot flyout in the 15th, finally got all of one. He has now homered seven times in his last 10 World Series games.
“It’s one of the greatest World Series games of all time,” Roberts said. “Emotional. I’m spent, emotionally.”
It counted for only one win, but it felt like so much more, especially considering the cascading effect that the pitching moves will have with three straight days of games in Los Angeles.
Both teams did, however, manage to avoid using any of their upcoming starters. Ohtani, 18 hours after another record-setting day at the plate, will take the mound against Shane Bieber in Game 4.
“I don’t know how many teams can say their starting pitcher was on base nine times in a row the night before,” Muncy said. “It’s a special breed. I don’t know how he does it.”
Said Ohtani: “I want to go to sleep as soon as possible.”
Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on X at @RowanKavner.
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