The Arizona Diamondbacks had a base available.
They decided to hire Freddie Freeman anyway.
In the Dodgers’ 6-5 comeback win over the Diamondbacks on Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium, Freeman provided the keynote in a winning two-run rally in the ninth inning, hitting a two-hit double to tie the score and scoring the winning run an at-bat later on a game-ending single by Teoscar Hernández.
It was the kind of late-game sequence the Dodgers have been masters of late, with the home team electrifying a sold-out Chavez Ravine crowd for their 18th comeback win of the season.
For most of the evening it was an evenly matched game between the two teams.
The Dodgers jumped out to an early two-run lead. Bobby Miller prevented an implosion in a two-run fourth inning. Then, after a monster two-run blast from Shohei Ohtani gave the Dodgers a 4-3 lead in the seventh inning, the club’s bullpen surrendered runs in the eighth and ninth innings to put the Diamondbacks back in front.
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However, Arizona’s lead would not last.
With two outs in the ninth inning, Will Smith sparked the winning rally by hitting a two-run double against the center field wall.
That left a base open for the Diamondbacks to potentially let Freeman, the first base slugger who had his best month of the season in June, walk.
Instead, Arizona had closer Paul Sewald pitch to the former MVP.
With the score at 0-2, the decision turned out dramatically wrong.
As cries of “Fredd-ee! Fredd-ee!” rang out from the stands, Freeman threw a 93 mph fastball over the outer edge of the zone and hit a tying double into the right-center field gap.
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Moments later, Hernández completed his comeback by hitting an RBI single through the left side of the infield, sending the crowd into raptures as the club secured its third walk-off victory of the season.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
