The Los Angeles Dodgers hit two home runs in their loss to the St. Louis Cardinals on Thursday night, led by a grand slam from Freddie Freeman.
Freeman’s big swing not only got the Dodgers back into a game they were being blown out of, but he reached a milestone with it being the 300th home run of his career. Freeman had been stuck on 299 since combining with Mookie Betts for back-to-back home runs against the San Diego Padres on May 12.
He nearly reached 300 career home runs while at Dodger Stadium, twice driving extra-base hits off the outfield wall. Freeman also tripled for his first hit in the series opener at Busch Stadium.
Although the 33-year-old is not fond of reflecting on personal accomplishments, particularly when they occur in a loss, Freeman was going to take one night to celebrate his achievement, as seen on SportsNet LA:
“It was nice. I think I hit the wall three times since I had 299. Wish you could do these things in wins, but still pretty cool. I don’t really like reminiscing on anything or doing that, because we’ve got a game tomorrow and it doesn’t really matter. But 300 home runs is quite a bit of home runs. I’ll call my dad tonight, we’ll talk about it and just enjoy it for the night. Then tomorrow, worry about tomorrow’s game.”
Dodgers players gathered in the clubhouse for a champagne toast to recognize Freeman, who said manager Dave Roberts, Mookie Betts, Clayton Kershaw and Jason Heyward spoke during it:
“It was nice. I wasn’t expecting that. Doc, Clayton, Mookie and J-Hey talked a little bit. It was nice. I think it’s kind of cool when teammates celebrate achievements of other teammates. We did that and I did that with [Kershaw] on his 200 wins, so it’s kind of a cool thing to hear teammates appreciate when you’ve done in this game, and to hear it from those kind of guys was nice.”
Freeman is the 155th player in MLB history with at least 300 career home runs. He is also the seventh active player with a minimum of 300 homers and 1,000 career RBI. That group includes Miguel Cabrera, Nelson Cruz, Joey Votto, Evan Longoria, Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado.
Freeman’s career high for home runs in a single season is 38, set in 2019. He slugged 21 homers in his first season with the Dodgers and has eight so far this year.
Freddie Freeman joins list of Dodgers with 300 home runs
Freeman, Duke Snider (1957), Gil Hodges (1958), Gary Sheffield (2001) and Adrián González (2016) are the only players to hit their 300th career home run while with the Dodgers.
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