IT'S BEEN 21 years since you passed away, Mrs. Freeman, but my mother once told me that moms always love to hear how beautiful their babies are. So I want to tell you about the youngest of your three sons -- Freddie. Wow, he is doing great. He is thriving, in a way that would make you smile the Rosemary Freeman smile that became his smile.
Freddie's a pretty good baseball player, but you already had an inkling of that when he was little. When he launched his first home run in T-ball, you turned to Freddie's dad -- your husband, Fred -- and exclaimed, "We have a home run hitter!" You were right, although Freddie and his reflexive self-deprecation are fully grown now and he'd never refer to himself as a slugger. Freddie batted .341 in Major League Baseball's 60-game season last year, with 13 homers, and won the National League Most Valuable Player award.
But his job is ancillary to who he's become. You'll want to know how others cherish him -- his co-workers, fans, colleagues on other teams. When the Phillies' Bryce Harper reaches first base against the Braves, he says, his conversations with Freddie are often about topics other than baseball. "How we are doing, how our families are doing," said Harper. "Freddie is just a great human."
He's known in baseball as Freddie The Hugger, Mrs. Freeman, which, of course, is all about you, and defines his eternal love for you. Family and teammates say that embrace you felt is deep, with layers. "He's got an infectious personality," said Hall of Famer Chipper Jones. "You know, everybody wants to hang around him. Everybody wants to get 30 seconds of his time and he doesn't disappoint. He doesn't turn anybody down."
Most of all, though, you'll want to know most about the family he has built -- and no coincidence, it mirrors your family, Mrs. Freeman. He says his wife, Chelsea, loves him in a way that he says reminds him of your love for him, and you would be amazed and proud about the lengths she went to fulfill his dreams. Amazed. You would be amazed at how your presence resonates in all of them daily, never more than in the past year. His life story is "crazy," Freddie said this spring, and he is so right.
Freddie talked to ESPN about all of this over the past six months. His first interview, the day before last Thanksgiving, was loosely scheduled for 90 minutes. But you should know that when the cameras rolled and the questions began, he was so dedicated to honoring you that he pushed himself through the most painful of the memories, clutching tissues in his right hand, relating experiences which, as he said, no 10-year-old should have to go through. Sobs often supplanted his words, but he wanted to talk about you to honor his mom and dad. He wanted to talk about the best days with you, and the worst, about saying goodbye to you, about how he grieved after you passed, about nearly being parentless by age 12, about how the life you started has now come full circle.
In that first afternoon spent wading through those evocations, he would collect his emotions enough to speak and continue, until the agony of loss overcame him. Then he would do it all over again. Hearing Freddie was wrenching. Hearing Freddie was inspiring, to witness your son's love for you, for Fred, for his family, for your family.
Four hours later -- four hours -- he finished talking about how your Freeman 5 led him through the incredible journey to form his own Freeman 5, and he wearily made eye contact with me. Through a tear-soaked smile, he said, "Look at this." He held up the tissue box, emptied completely.
Mrs. Freeman, you raised a strong boy. You would be so proud of your baby boy.
He had you for only 10 years, but you are etched into his mind, your affection a mural in his heart, of his first happy years. He is little brother to Andrew and Phillip, forming a trio of laser tag and wrestling matches, and as Freddie said through laughter, they once turned your house into a boxing ring with four walls. He smiled as he recalled how you really didn't know much about baseball, but because Fred and Fred's dad and your sons loved baseball, you threw yourself into the game passionately. Freddie swung left-handed from the time he was very little, and when a coach tried to turn him around to bat right-handed, you marched out to home plate and walked Freddie off the field, declaring that no, Freddie hits left-handed. He might throw right-handed, but he hits left-handed.
You are an indelible part of what he remembers as his first official home run, when he was 8, because you happened to be walking Chip, your Australian shepherd, beyond the outfield fence just as he lifted the fly into the air -- and what Freddie remembers is how the ball was sailing toward your head and you had absolutely no concern about whether you would be clocked by the baseball and were completely overwhelmed with joy for him, jumping with excitement. "Her love just poured out," Freddie said, "and into me."
Because he was 5 years old when your cancer first appeared, in the form of a bleeding mole, he was oblivious to the detail and fear. Melanoma. The general practitioner who first saw it was so startled, as your husband recalled, that he wouldn't touch it. He diagnosed it as Stage 4 and suggested you might not have six months to live. The mole was removed and thankfully, there were no initial signs of a cancerous spread, but the doctors warned you and Fred that with melanoma, you could never be sure of remission. However, if you get through five years, Fred remembers being told, that's a really good sign.
Mrs. Freeman, you changed your diet dramatically, exercised more, took care of yourself and your boys, and as the family prepared for the fifth anniversary of your surgery, you suffered appendicitis. A scan of your lungs revealed the return of the cancer. After you started chemotherapy, Freddie, Andrew and Phillip remember being woken at 4 a.m. to see you being wheeled out in an ambulance.
When you were in the hospital, and then moved into hospice, your boys stopped playing sports. Rather, when their school days ended, your sons would join you, to be with you as much as possible, Freddie recalled. "I mean, even though she was in the hospital bed, that's my mom," he said.
Mrs. Freeman, Freddie spoke with such pride about you. "So I wanted to get close to her," he said. "I'm sure I was a big 10-year-old, so me crawling into a hospital bed wasn't too comfortable for her. But she never said a word. She let me come. Those little moments are so special to me. Her pain was a 20 out on a scale of 10 and she never said one word. She let us crawl in bed and she tried to be as much as she could to us, even though she had to lay there. And she was more than that, a mom, even in those times. We obviously thought she was going to beat it. ... She did everything she could to beat that disease."
On June 13, 2000, Freddie was in class in the fifth grade and the phone in the class rang. His teacher told him to grab his backpack and to go to the office, and as he turned into the courtyard, he could see his Uncle Mark and his brother, Phillip, through the windows. "Just bawling," Freddie remembered. "I was about a hundred feet away, and I just took off running straight for them. Because I knew.
"I was 10. I was naïve. I still thought my mom was going to pull through."
The principal prayed with them, for you, and then the family gathered at your bedside, Mrs. Freeman. Your sons and Fred walked away from the room, and Freddie remembers looking up at Fred and asking if he could go and see you, by himself.
He went back, climbed on the bed, kissed you on the forehead, and hugged you.
"I don't know how long I was in there," Freddie said. "I just couldn't believe she was gone."
Your oldest son, Andrew, remembered seeing Freddie against a wall weeping, his world was completely devastated. For months, there was no baseball. For months, he stayed home. Without you, Mrs. Freeman, they were all broken. "I don't remember going to practices or playing games," Freddie said. "I didn't want to go and I didn't want to do anything. It was summer and I just wanted to stay home. I mean, I don't even know how you process that as a 10-year-old."
THESE DAYS, FREDDIE and Fred talk every day, a connection reinforced during that summer of 2000.
"You know, you thought you're close to your father, and we just got closer than you could possibly imagine," Freddie recalled. "We already had a strong relationship and that's just how the relationship just got even stronger."
"I don't even know how my dad did it, you know, but, you know, we just kind of hung out in the house and tried to grind through each day. Everyone kept saying, 'Time heals, time heals.'
"And obviously when you're in that moment, you don't think anything is ever going to help. And it doesn't in that moment. Words don't help. But through it, my dad had to be Super Dad, and he nailed it."
Then, after many, many weeks, Freddie asked his dad to go back to a field, and their grieving shifted from the house to the ballfield, each of them struggling in their own way. "You realized that it actually did take your mind off something for a little bit," Freddie said. "And those short amount of times we played catch turned into long times at the field, batting practice and spending as much time as we could to take our minds off our lives.
Baseball, Freddie recalled, "became our medicine. It was our emotional medicine to get us through."
But your husband was struggling, too. As Fred recalled, he was depressed, while learning to do all that he needed to do to raise your three sons: the laundry, the cooking. He put on weight, about 100 pounds, his health regressing. One night when Freddie was 12, he and his dad were watching basketball together, a Lakers game.
"My dad stood up," Freddie recalled, "and he couldn't catch his breath. Just breathing really hard."
Fred said he was fine, but after listening to his father struggle to breathe, Freddie threw some clothes at him, Mrs. Freeman, and insisted he needed to go to the hospital -- and so they went, to the same hospital where you had been treated. Fred was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and a doctor told him that if he hadn't gone to the hospital that night, he most likely would not have woken up the following morning. "We were just so lucky," Freddie recalled. "I was this close to being parentless at 12 years old."
Mrs. Freeman, your sons implored Fred to take better care of himself, and more than two decades later, they are all here, for each other.
Last fall, after Freddie won the NL MVP, his hug with his father lingered. "I always tell him I wouldn't be here without him," Freddie said. "And it is so true. He always says, 'No, you have talent,' this and that. But ... for what he had to go through when I was 10 and my brothers were 13 and 16, it's emotional for me."
And Fred believes that if not for Freddie, he would not have been present for the MVP award, for any of it. For Chelsea and the grandkids.
EVEN BEFORE CHELSEA Goff married Freddie, she knew how much he wanted a big family, and about a year after their wedding, she became pregnant. As she watched Freddie hold Charlie, who was born in 2016, she thought he looked like a natural, his affection translating so easily into his son. What he said about you, Mrs. Freeman, is that you loved him and you loved him hard -- all-in, hand in hand -- and Freddie inherited that trait. He and Chelsea hoped for more children, of course.
But it didn't happen as they had anticipated. Coincidentally, some of her closest friends hoped for babies, and one by one, her friends celebrated pregnancies, and month after month, the indicator on her home pregnancy tests -- she remembers dozens and dozens and dozens -- came back negative. For Chelsea, this was utterly crushing, partly because she understood what family meant to Freddie.
There were doctor appointments, Mrs. Freeman. There were questions, a lot of them unanswered. Charlie had been delivered through a Caesarean section, and Chelsea wondered if that had affected her ability to have children. Her suspicions were effectively confirmed: In one procedure, her doctor found scarring, a thinning of her uterine lining. Even if she became pregnant, she was told, it was still less than certain she could carry the baby through the whole term. Gestational surrogacy was recommended, as Freddie and Chelsea first revealed in February.
"I'd always thought surrogacy was an amazing option," Chelsea said. "Science is absolutely incredible. It's our embryo completely, our DNA, my egg and Freddie's sperm, and 100% genetically ours."
Freddie had reservations. He wasn't sure about whether he and Chelsea could feel as if they were parents of a child carried to term by somebody else, even if the fertilized egg was comprised of the Freemans' DNA. As he tried to sort through that question in his mind, Chelsea learned from a friend that there was another baseball player who had had babies through surrogacy. She asked for the contact number of the wife of the player, and the next day -- the next day -- an alert popped up on her phone, bearing a baseball transaction. The Braves signed that very player: Cole Hamels, the star left-hander whom Freeman had faced repeatedly in the NL East wars.
As you can imagine, Mrs. Freeman, that incredible coincidence seemed like more than a coincidence to Freddie, to Chelsea. Rather, it was a sign that this was the right path. Chelsea connected with Hamels' wife, Heidi Strobel. "She gave me all of her referrals, for her doctor, her surrogate agency, everything," Chelsea recalled. "And she goes, the only, um, issue is that they're in California. Meanwhile, me and Freddie had just bought a home in California. So it was absolutely perfect for us."
Cole and Heidi eased Freddie's concerns about surrogacy. "He said, 'No, Freddie, this is the greatest thing ever,'" Freeman recalled. "He said, 'Freddie, this is perfect. You're going to love the process. They're going to lead you in the right direction.' ... So he really calmed my nerves and answered a lot of my questions."
The Freemans moved ahead. Chelsea embraced the in vitro fertilization process, the medications, syringes, injections, the countless appointments. Mrs. Freeman, Chelsea recalled that Charlie helped her get through it, because Chelsea imagined how Charlie would thrive as an older brother. On the day of Chelsea's egg retrieval, in California, Freddie was in spring training with the Braves, in Florida. He told Braves manager Brian Snitker that he needed to take his phone onto the field during a morning of drills, as he waited for word that Chelsea came through OK.
The onset of COVID-19 postponed the process of surrogacy, however, and shut down the world, and the world of sports. Everybody went home. Freddie went home. Nine days before the embryo was scheduled to be transferred to the surrogate, Chelsea took another home test. Incredibly, improbably, she was pregnant. Through their shared joy, Mrs. Freeman, Chelsea and Freddie talked about the surrogacy and the question of whether they should move ahead -- and quickly decided yes, absolutely. Chelsea called their surrogate, who happily agreed.
It's possible that the procedures done to prepare for egg retrieval had enhanced Chelsea's chances for pregnancy, her doctor explained. It's possible she would have become pregnant, anyway. Whatever the reasons, it all felt miraculous to the Freemans, after the months and years of fertility frustration and waning hope.
Mrs. Freeman, how about this crazy coincidence: Chelsea became pregnant on the date on which the egg transfer to the surrogate had been scheduled.
Two more boys were on the way. Two more boys, to make three.
IN THE PAST decade, Fred gave Freddie a cross containing a cut of your hair. He always plays in long sleeves because of his complexion, because his complexion is your complexion. There has always been an assumption that the videos from Freddie's childhood -- a lot of them taken by you, Mrs. Freeman -- were contained somewhere in Fred's house. But no one knew exactly where. Alma Freeman, who married Fred about a dozen years ago, decided to look for them. As Alma remembered, you were omnipresent within the family, remembered constantly through stories and cherished, and Alma had thought that if she could find the videos, she could have them restored digitally as Christmas presents for your boys.
Last fall, Fred and Alma remodeled the house, and Alma went hunting among boxes for the videos -- and lo and behold, there they were, with your handwriting noting particular events. Sixteen Super 8 movies, 22 on VHS, five others without individual containers. Alma took them to a local place to have them compiled on memory sticks, and late in the workday on Christmas Eve, Alma and Fred got the phone call that the job was complete. The man on the other end of the call told them the home movies were ready and could be picked up sometime after Christmas.
"Do you have them?" Fred asked.
Yes, the Freemans were told, but the store was closing for the day.
"If we gave you $100, will you stay?" Fred asked, and the next day, Alma and Fred gave Andrew, Phillip and Freddie each their own collection of your home movies. Chelsea could hear you. Charlie could hear you. Andrew and Phillip could hear you. Freddie could hear you. For all of them, it was like meeting you, as Alma recalled. The text messages from your sons started landing Christmas night, starting with Freddie. You made him so happy again, Mrs. Freeman.
"I just heard my mom's voice," Freddie texted, joyfully. Chelsea heard your voice for the first time.
At 4 a.m. on Dec. 30, Chelsea's water broke, and the scramble for the hospital was on. About four hours later, Brandon was born.
On Feb. 14, Maximus was born. In the moments after the birth, the surrogate had a question for Chelsea: Is his hair red? For years, the surrogate explained, she had dreamt of giving birth to a redhead.
Yes, Chelsea responded, Maximus is more of a redhead than the others. Freddie's red hair. Your red hair, Mrs. Freeman.
Freddie and Chelsea talked through the circumstances of how their little boys came to be. Without Brandon -- without the struggle to get pregnant -- there would be no Maximus. And without Maximus, there would be no Brandon, because Maximus' path required the procedures that might have facilitated Chelsea's pregnancy.
Freddie wishes you were here, in the flesh, to see him play, to experience that with you. "I know she's having a blast watching me with the best seat in the house," he said. "That's the one thing that I wish she was able to see me play, in person, in the big leagues."
But Mrs. Freeman, after hearing about you from Fred and your sons, after hearing your voice on those home movies, I'd bet what you really enjoy is Freddie and Chelsea and the happy chaos of Charlie, Brandon and Maximus. You were the center of your Freeman 5 and Freddie would be the first to say you are in the middle of his Freeman 5, too.
I mentioned this before and I'll mention again -- my own late mother told me that moms always want to hear how beautiful their babies are. Mrs. Freeman, what your baby boy is now -- what he has now -- is beautiful.