LOS ANGELES – About an hour after coming as close to a perfect baseball game as he could, Freddie Freeman stood near home plate at Dodger Stadium, where he had just ended Game 1 of the World Series with an extra-inning grand slam, and tried to explain what just happened. Over 10 innings and 3 hours and 27 minutes, the game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees went from a pitchers’ duel to a hitting and baserunning clinic in strategic theater to an indelible highlight in the 120 years of the World Series. Baseball at its best comes in many forms. This game somehow managed to cram them all into one.

The final score – Dodgers 6, Yankees 3 – doesn’t scream classic. It’s misleading. On Friday night, the 52,394 souls lucky enough to watch Game 1 in person watched the rare sporting event teeming with hoopla, only to find it outshone. Baseball’s two most famous franchises, true elites from their shores, fought. And then, with one swing, on a 90-mph first pitch from Nestor Cortes, Freeman managed to deliver the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history and limp around the bases, 36 years after Kirk Gibson famously did the same.

“Just look at this game,” Freeman said, and began summarizing everything that had unfolded. Four innings of shutout baseball. The Dodgers made a run with a sacrifice fly. Giancarlo Stanton counters with a towering two-run home run. The Dodgers struck back with a run off Yankees closer Luke Weaver. The Yankees seemingly went ahead with what appeared to be a Gleyber Torres home run, but it was ruled interference when a Dodgers fan reached over the fence to get it, which was confirmed by replay. New York tags Los Angeles’ top reliever, Blake Treinen, for a run in the 10th. And the excitement in the bottom of the 10th: a walk and an infield single to bring up Shohei Ohtani, whose error to left moved the runners to second and third base, opening a base for Yankees manager Aaron Boone who intentionally walked pitched to Mookie Betts. giving Freeman the match against Cortes, who had not thrown a pitch since September 18.

“Back and forth moments – that’s what creates classics,” Freeman said. “And I think we made one tonight.”

The tens of millions who watched it, in the United States, Japan and around the world, know that they did. Great baseball can be as filled with good (Jazz Chisholm Jr. steals second and third before scoring in the 10th inning) as it can be filled with bad (he was able to do this because of Treinen’s slow delivery). It can involve good defense (Dodgers shortstop Tommy Edman saves a run in the sixth by keeping a grounder in the infield) and ugly defense (both Yankees corner outfielders play doubles into triples).

“Some people think a brawl is a good game,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said. “Some people think a pitcher’s duel is a good game. I don’t know. I think if you just add a little bit of all the elements, it’s quite fun.”

This game had plenty. Before the first pitch, tension was already building among the starters: Gerrit Cole and Jack Flaherty, two right-handers who grew up in Southern California. The Dodgers had desperately tried to sign Cole when he was a free agent, and the Yankees tried to trade for Flaherty in July but backed out, and the two men, now playing against their former suitors, spent the first innings one time Through. boost each other up.

Stanton’s sixth-inning home run and subsequent look – not to mention Flaherty’s desperate face after realizing the mistake he had made – left the Dodgers up 2-1, marking the beginning of the scheming between Boone and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. who had left for Flaherty for the third time through the order and had paid dearly. Boone turned to Weaver in the eighth after Ohtani doubled off the top of the wall and moved to third thanks to New York’s sloppy defense. It was strategically sound, but failed to prevent the Dodgers from tying the score.

Two innings later, it could have been Ohtani again or Betts or anyone else, really, in the Dodgers’ narrow lineup from top to bottom. The fact that it was Freeman, the 35-year-old first baseman, was as exceptional a denouement as possible.

“I was hoping Mookie would get a hit to take the pressure off him,” said Freeman’s father, Fred, to whom Freeman ran after the home run, clasping his hands through the net that surrounds the field. “Then they let him out. And I thought, ‘Oh, Freddie, Freddie, Freddie.’ And then the first ball.”

Over the past month, watching Freeman has been painful. Not just because he hadn’t scored an extra base hit in the Dodgers’ first eleven playoff games. Freeman is clearly in pain. His sprained ankle is right. His body aches. He’s an eight-time All-Star, a future Hall of Famer, a World Series champion with Atlanta in 2021. He was already coming off a brutal year, with his three-year-old son Max suffering a bout of Guillain-Barré syndrome. Freeman continued to push back the pain, hoping the five days off since the NLCS would do his body enough good to do something memorable.

His triple in the first inning, stumbling around the bases, signaled he was ready. No one knew there would be an even better final.

“In my eyes, he’s a superhero, real, honest and sincere,” Dodgers reliever Anthony Banda said. “To see him get through his injury and see the rehab he put in, the time he put in and just trying to get healthy again, get back on the field and do everything he can – that speaks volumes about him as a player and as a person he really cares about this group. He cares about the organization, and that’s what drives all of us.”

That goes for everyone on the field Friday, including the Yankees, who now have to recover from as much of a knee injury as possible. The good news is that there is still plenty of baseball to be played, numerous opportunities for the Yankees to do so, and the standard for the rest of the series has gone from high to stratospheric.

It’s unfair to suggest that any of the games, no matter how many are left, can match Game 1 – unless this is the kind of series that runs magic, where two teams are so good, so evenly matched, so ready for the moment, so eager to win, that the hype is just an accelerant. Perhaps Game 2 on Saturday night will pick up where Game 1 delivered so clearly.

“The end,” said Dodgers center Kiké Hernández. “I mean, it doesn’t get any better than that.”

That is indeed the case, because Hernández forgets one thing. When it comes to the Dodgers and Yankees, the 120th World Series, this battle between the titans that have so much more great baseball in them, this is just the beginning.