If you asked most baseball fans to offer up one lasting image from the 2024 MLB season, it would probably be a hobbled Freddie Freeman, triumphantly rounding the bases after hitting a walk-off grand slam against New York Yankees lefty Nestor Cortes to win Game 1 of the World Series for the Los Angeles Dodgers. As soon as the ball landed in the Dodger Stadim bleachers, it became one of the most iconic moments the game has ever seen — and, for Cortes, his worst nightmare.
While plenty of criticism was reserved for Yankees manager Aaron Boone for putting Cortes — just coming back from an elbow injury that held him out for much of the second half of the 2024 season — in that position in the first place, Cortes himself got plenty of hate, especially as the Yankees went on to lose the series in five games. So it's perfectly understandable for the lefty to still be preoccupied with the moment that could well define his big-league career. But while you can't blame Cortes for dwelling on it, his revisiting of Freeman's homer this week was delusional at best and disrespectful at worst.
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Nestor Cortes conveniently forgets he wasn't the only one battling through injury in Game 1 of the World Series
First, the delusion: Despite New York getting played off the field by L.A., more often resembling a Keystone Kops routine than a baseball team at times, Cortes insists that the Yankees were actually the better team. No, seriously: "We had done enough to win [Game 1]," he told The Athletic on Wednesday. "They can talk whatever they want to talk, but we win Game 1 — which we should have — we lost 2 and 3, we win Game 4 and we should have won Game 5. Then we go back to LA up 3 to 2."
There are ... a lot of "shoulds" in the above, to say the least. Sure, the Yankees had plenty of chances to win Game 1, but they didn't, and they have no one to blame but themselves for that; the Dodgers made plays, while the Yankees made mistakes that coughed up multiple late leads. And from there, the idea that New York "should" have won Game 5 is laughable, considering just how poorly the Yankees played over that spectacular collapse.
But beyond the game itself, the one who should really be insulted here is Freeman. What will rightfully be remembered as one of the most spectacular swings in baseball history is, in Cortes' telling, just a fluke of fate.
“I hate how it happened,” Cortes said. “Trust me, I [wasn’t] able to sleep after that, just because I replayed it in my head every single time. I guess he was on the right side of the baseball where he hit the home run. But it could have been a pop-up, it could have been a ground ball, it could have been a fly ball. There were so many outcomes with that pitch.”
Sure, it could've been a lot of things, but Freeman made sure that it wasn't, playing through an ankle injury to turn and drive a pitch in the biggest moment of his baseball career. Again: It's understandable for Cortes to want to be defensive here; he's carved out an impressive career for himself, one that shouldn't be solely defined by one bad moment (that could hardly be said to be entirely his fault anyway). But you also have to have enough self-awareness to know how answers like this are going to come off. This is part of sports at the highest level; sometimes things don't go your way. You can either accept it and move forward, as Cortes hopes to do after being traded to the Milwaukee Brewers over the offseason, or you can fight a losing battle.