The unknown, the uncertainty, the unseen surrounded Freddie Freeman in his isolation, haunting him, as we've all been haunted in this awful year, his fear germinating after he was informed in the middle of the summer that he had tested positive for COVID-19.
Freddie and Chelsea, his wife, had been very careful, their bubble a moat, everything Lysoled and wiped and double-wiped. So how did the coronavirus invade their lives? Where was it? Was it in their home? Was it on the plane? How sick was he? How sick could he get? Would Freddie be able to play baseball in the season that was supposed to soon start?
But much, much more importantly, was his 3-year-old son, Charlie, infected? Was Chelsea infected? Would anything happen with the surprise pregnancy for which they had waited, hoped and prayed over years? Would everything be OK?
He was alone and trapped with all of those worries after midnight, and his skin was hot -- so hot you could cook something on it, he thought. Freddie Freeman had never felt this sick before. He Googled and read something that if your temperature goes above 104, you probably need to go to the hospital. He read something else that if your temperature goes above 104.5, you were at heightened risk for seizures.
He took his temperature and saw the numbers: 104.5 degrees. Freeman thought about texting George Poulis, the Atlanta Braves' athletic trainer who had informed him about his positive test, but it was 2 a.m. He thought: I need help.
Freeman got on his knees and prayed to God: Please don't take me. We've got two little boys on the way. We've got a young family. We've got to get through this. He pulled himself back onto the bed, scared to go to sleep because he was worried he might not wake up, and pointed the infrared thermometer at his forehead again.
Freddie had lost Rosemary Freeman, his mother, to skin cancer when he was a boy -- a trauma, he more fully understood as an adult, that no 10-year-old should have to go through -- and that tragedy pulled him closer to his family, to his father, Fred Freeman. Chelsea was moved by the way Freddie and Fred interacted and talked daily, and she knew that after he had grown up in that kind of love, he wanted to have children. Four years ago, Charlie became the first, the little boy with a big smile who watches his dad and perfectly mimics how he moves, how he swings, how he hugs.
A mini-Freddie, in Chelsea's eyes, and Freddie "just immediately became a Superdad somehow," she said. "It's like he's good at everything, and then he became just the best dad. For me, there was a transition period. I was like, 'Oh, my gosh, my whole life is changing. I'm exhausted.' He instantly had this special bond with Charlie and it was really, really special to see." The Freemans intended to have another child not long after Charlie arrived.
But there were complications. Doctor visits, procedures -- Chelsea going through a lot of them by herself, because of the job that takes Freddie away from home -- and there was a long wait, dozens and dozens of pregnancy tests that were negative. One doctor suggested she might not be able to get pregnant again, a heartbreaking thought for her. "I think the hardest part about going through infertility is just mentally," Chelsea said. "You are so drained, because you don't know why. [You're] like, 'Why isn't this happening?'"
Then, this spring, after COVID-19 shut down the world, the greatest surprise: a positive pregnancy test. Chelsea was shocked, happy, crying. "I immediately felt like I was healed, like all the stress and worry and everything was lifted off my shoulders," she remembered.
Freddie was out of the house, working out and due back home in about 30 minutes, so she scrambled to find a fun way to tell him. Charlie drew a picture of himself and his dad, and his mom alongside, with a big belly. But 3-year-old artists can be imprecise, and when Freddie came through the door, he didn't immediately know what his son was trying to convey. Then Chelsea handed him the good news, and he cried, too.
The Freemans had two babies on the way.
Late in June, after Major League Baseball and the players' association agreed to terms on a 60-game season, Freeman played with Charlie late at night, and the next morning, July 2, he didn't feel especially well. Freeman initially believed it was just some kind of bug, a flu, because his most recent coronavirus test had been negative. But to be safe, he had another COVID test. He was sitting next to Chelsea on the couch when the call came that he tested positive, his thoughts immediately veering to his wife, who was still in her first trimester of a pregnancy that had been such a wonderful surprise.
"That was my only concern," he recalled. "I believed I was going to be OK. Because you heard that with young people, you can make it through. All we heard was that older folks were having problems. But I was so concerned because there was no information with what this does to fetuses."
He moved to a different part of the house, in a room on the main floor away from the others. Chelsea wore a mask and gloves to deliver food to his door, and she and Charlie stayed upstairs. But it might have already been too late to prevent her and Charlie from getting infected. An aunt living with them got sick, throwing up. She tested positive. And Freddie's temperature climbed. He seemed to have every symptom he had read about -- the aches, the congestion, the disappearance of smell and taste. He had put barbecue sauce in his mouth and it didn't register. "Every news station on TV had the total number of cases and how many deaths," he recalled. "The unknown was so huge to me, that I didn't know what was going to happen next."
He needed help. The son of Rosemary and Fred Freeman got off the bed and prayed, for his family. Please don't take me -- I'm not ready. Concerned about what might happen, Freeman stayed awake for a couple more hours before dozing off.
After he woke up, Freeman's temperature dipped, reading 101.5. His fever had broken, and what he felt thereafter was more like a sinus infection, his energy sapped. But he was better. He didn't tell Chelsea immediately how high his temperature had spiked, and she didn't know he had prayed until she overheard him relate the story over the phone.
Less than a week after Freddie tested positive, Chelsea did too. He called the Braves' medical staff, concern saturating his voice, and they reassured him that he was going be fine. "I'm not worried about me," Freeman replied, before giving them the news. "My wife is pregnant." There was silence on the other end of the phone, initially. There was no established precedent for any of this -- there was the unknown, the uncertainty, the unseen.
Freddie worked to keep Chelsea from going on WebMD, to save her from the anxiety of reading information that wasn't specific to her case.
"You could tell that she was just so worried and nervous about what was going on inside," he said. "Because we had tried so hard and then we finally got pregnant, and then we get dealt this blow. We're like, 'OK, how do we handle this?'"
He called friends whose wives had COVID-19 in the midst of their pregnancies, and all that anecdotal feedback was good. Everybody was OK. The pregnancies seemed unaffected. Freeman called a doctor he knew, repeatedly, and the conversation reassured him. So far, so good, the doctor reported.
Chelsea got through it. After 18 weeks, she had an anatomy scan and everything was fine, an enormous relief. Charlie tested positive, but besides feeling a little sick for a couple of days, he was OK.
After Freddie's temperature spiked, he got better, but there were a lot of questions about whether he would be able to play at the outset of the Braves' season. Less than a week from the opener, he had consecutive negative tests, and went back to work.
The weekend that Freeman was sick, he was in such a diminished condition that after teammate Nick Markakis FaceTimed with him and heard his suffering friend, Markakis opted out of the 2020 season -- a decision he would eventually reverse. But Markakis' concern speaks to where Freeman was physically less than three weeks before the start of the 60-game season. He spent two weeks in bed, and returned to the Braves' workouts for four days, and then he was standing in the batter's box against the Mets' Jacob deGrom in the team's opener July 24.
He felt awful at the plate -- he hadn't taken much batting practice, his timing was off, and he pressed. Twelve games into the season, he was batting .195 and Braves manager Brian Snitker decided to hold him out of the starting lineup, to give him a breather.
Freddie needed more than that. "I was just lost," he said. "I was doing everything I could to hit the ball and I just couldn't do it."
He explained to his wife how overwhelmed he was. "Chelsea, I don't know if I can do this," he said to her. "I'm so tired. I think I'm hurting the team. I don't know if I can play."
A number of veterans besides Markakis had opted out of the season -- opted out of the unknown, the uncertainty, the unseen -- including longtime pitcher David Price. Chelsea recalled, "He's like, 'Should I opt out?' Maybe I'm just not good anymore. Is it worth it, with everything going on?'"
She responded with inspiration, in the form of a text sent to him before the game he was scheduled to sit out: You didn't come this far to only come this far. "And I sat there and read it," he said. "I was like, you're 30 years old, you have 10 years in the big leagues. You can't let this beat you. You can't."
In the midst of the game, Freeman went to Snitker and said, "Put me in this game, I'm ready." Freeman struck out, but felt markedly better, his perspective transformed. He would hit .378 for the rest of the season, with a .721 slugging percentage.
This is what Freddie and Chelsea Freeman now know, at the end of a year of haunting unknowns: She was right, that they each had further to go, together, after their fertility concerns, after enduring the coronavirus. Freddie scored a league-high 51 runs for the season, drove in 46 runs in the 47 games after Chelsea's text, and the Braves advanced to Game 7 of the National League Championship Series. Freeman got first-place votes on 28 of 30 ballots and was named the NL's Most Valuable Player. Hitting coach Kevin Seitzer sent Freeman a text: Congratulations on your MVP -- give this award to your wife.
This is what the Freemans know: Charlie will become an older brother to two baby boys in January, in the new year.