Column - World Series Lunacy

Oct. 31, 2025 -- When someone hits a walk-off home run and is rounding third and headed for home, I think of heaven.

I’m not sure where I saw it, but several years ago, I came across an online post that described the way teams celebrate at home plate as they wait for their teammate to touch home like how loved ones encourage someone to take one final step and reach heaven. Each look on their faces is of pure joy, and depending on how crazy the game was before the final pitch, full of delirious lunacy.

On Monday night, delirious lunacy was on full display in the highest possible way, on the biggest stage baseball can offer. Game 3 of the World Series, tied for the longest game in World Series history with 18 innings, ended in familiar fashion from a year ago, and once again reminded me of how life, often unpredictable, still can give moments worth remembering for decades.

Freddie Freeman did it again. He’s the only player to do it twice, and in a sport where it’s common for no-name players to steal the spotlight from the superstars, Freeman has been a constant reminder that sometimes the names aren’t so obscure. The only player to be as heroic as Freeman might be David Freese, who 14 years to the day of Game 3’s marathon, has his moment during a wild Game 6 in the 2011 World Series.

Down to the final strike in the ninth inning in a win-or-go-home game for the Cardinals, Freese, who was raised in St. Louis growing up, roped a triple off the right-field wall to tie the game. Later, in the 11th, Freese led off the bottom half of the inning with his own walk-off home run to force a Game 7 the next day, which the Cardinals would win in part due to Freese, who doubled in two runs in the first inning to tie the game early. For his efforts, Freese was named the MVP of the World Series, etched in the rich history of baseball forever.

Baseball’s history is complicated, but beautiful all at the same time. Nobody really knows who created it; some say it was a man who commanded Northern forces during the Battle of Fort Sumter, which started the Civil War. Others claim that it was a group of twenty men from New York who established the first baseball team with a set of rules in the early 1800s. Regardless, baseball as America’s oldest sport rarely has moments that haven’t been seen before. When Freeman’s home run went over the centerfield wall on Monday night (or Tuesday morning in most parts of the country), he was the first player ever in the history of the World Series to have two walk-off home runs. Babe Ruth played in 10 Fall Classics, Yogi Berra played in 14. Neither of them ever did it, but Freeman has done it twice, including the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history last year.

Like players, coaches in big moments choose their spots to be aggressive. Sometimes

it’s the right move to be aggressive against a team’s best hitter, sometimes (in the spirit of

Halloween) it’s better to be scared to death and let them get a free pass to first base. In

1998, Barry Bonds was walked with the bases loaded to intentionally score a run, and while it didn’t work at all (the next batter won the game for the Giants), it only added to the allure that Bonds brought to the batter’s box.

In Game 3, the Toronto Blue Jays intentionally walked Shohei Ohtani four times after he tied the record for the most extra-base hits in a World Series game with four (two home runs and two doubles). He reached base 9 times, which hadn’t been seen in any capacity since 1942 and only four times ever. Ohtani, arguably the greatest player in baseball’s history, is matched by no one in how often he sets records. The biggest stages should feature the biggest players, and after wasting away with the Angels and never making the postseason in six years with the team that plays in Anaheim yet claims Los Angeles as their home, he is certainly making up for the lost time to deliver postseason magic game after game.

I don’t know what I will remember most. I have watched hundreds of baseball games,

but none like what happened this week. The last time a World Series game lasted that long, I fell asleep in the 13th inning back in 2018. I was determined to stay up for every out, to not fall in the same trap that my eighth grade self fell into. And I’m thankful that a bottle of cherry Coke was enough to keep me up. I’m thankful for my friend Isaiah Phelps, who let me crash in his room and watch it on his TV with him when I got back to my dorm. I’m thankful that I was

able to share the moment with someone. Because no matter the result, being able to be with people makes any game so much better, delirious lunacy and all.