by Mark Langill
An emotionally exhausted Freddie Freeman returned to the Dodgers on Monday afternoon, uncertain of his ability as a rusty baseball player, but certain of his gratitude as a relieved parent.
Freeman burst into tears when he arrived at the ballpark and spotted T-shirts supporting his 3-year-old son Maximus, who is recovering from Guillain-Barré syndrome, a nerve disorder that can cause paralysis. Freeman said his son is expected to recover, but there is no timetable. Freeman also said his son needs to learn how to walk again and open his fingers.
Freeman spoke about the gut-wrenching family situation with a towel draped around his neck, which soaked up more tears than sweat as he recalled the events of the past two weeks.
“Bear with me,” Freeman began. “You guys know I’m an emotional person.”
Freeman rejoined the Dodgers on Monday after missing eight games while on the family emergency list.
He thanked the Dodger front office and the baseball community for their collective prayers and good wishes. Freeman said that Dodger President of Baseball Operations, Andrew Friedman told Freeman to take his time and not worry about a timetable to return to baseball.
When his son’s condition showed signs of improvement, Freeman took batting practice at his El Modena High School alma mater in Orange. One of the sessions was for exercise after sleeping on a hospital couch. The next session with his father, which included running the bases, was to tune up his skills after the layoff.
Freeman said he didn’t pay close attention to the Dodgers during his absence, except for a few random highlights from the series in Houston from July 26–28.
“It was a little weird, I wasn’t here, and I wasn’t getting any updates,” he said. “But we needed our privacy and fight this thing together as a family.”
The most heartbreaking moment for Freeman was seeing his son on a ventilator. Freeman said both he and his wife repeatedly wished they could trade places with their son. Freeman also said he would gladly repeatedly strike out with the bases loaded in the ninth inning of a World Series Game 7 situation if his son’s health could improve.
When asked about the hardest part of the ordeal, Freeman said, “Watching my son having a hard time breathing when five days earlier he’s doing front flips and everything.”
Freeman said his son’s ventilator and breathing tubes were removed on July 31. The smile returned to the little boy’s face, and he was pretending to be Spider-Man, “shooting” visitors with the dangling IV tubes still attached to his wrist.
“Within six minutes he was sitting on me,” Freeman said. “I can’t tell you how good that felt, to be able to hold my son again. That was a special time, just knowing how hard he had fought for five days. When he was born, we were trying to figure out a name. We were naming two kids at the time. Chelsea came across Maximus. That’s a strong name. I didn’t know it would be proven true within four years of his life and how strong this little boy is.”
The strength of his son Maximus lifts Freddie Freeman was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.