In 2018, toward the end of a decade in which Mike Trout was the best player in baseball, Major League Baseball reckoned with its failure to transform him into a national icon. Commissioner Rob Manfred inelegantly but bluntly suggested why the league had struggled to market Trout.
“Player marketing requires one thing for sure: the player,” Manfred said then.
The Angels shot back at Manfred, with a statement — crafted in part by owner Arte Moreno — that vigorously defended Trout: “We applaud him for prioritizing his personal values over commercial self-promotion.”
Neither Trout nor any other player owes his team or the league anything more than his best effort on the field. However, the better fans get to know their favorite players as personalities, the easier for the league to broaden its appeal beyond the diehards.
This is nothing new. Half a century ago, ABC used its trademark “Up Close and Personal” segments to get Americans invested in anonymous Olympic athletes.
In that sense, Apple’s documentary on the 2024 World Series is a hit. The three-part series called “Fight for Glory” premieres Thursday on Apple TV+.
There are no major revelations here. It is all about the celebration of a marquee World Series — The Dodgers! The New York Yankees! MLB owns the copyright to the documentary, and Manfred is listed in the credits.
Also listed in the credits: Chelsea Freeman, wife of Freddie; and Brianna Betts, wife of Mookie. Camera crews followed the families of the Dodgers stars: on the drive to the games, in the stands during the games, around the team after the games, and even at home.
Apple put cameras wherever it could and put microphones on as many people as it could, including managers and coaches, umpires, broadcasters, and reporters. Jack Harris, who covers the Dodgers for The Times, welcomed a camera operator into his car and did an interview as he drove to Dodger Stadium.
Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts, left, and first baseman Freddie Freeman share a laugh during a game against the Cleveland Guardians in August 2023.
(Nick Cammett / Associated Press)
Freeman is as open with the media as any player in the league, and Betts already has made his mark in the media world. His budding media empire includes a podcast and a YouTube channel. He used the former as a forum for teammates to review the World Series experience and how the Yankees collapsed in the series, and he used the latter to invite fans to see the Dodgers’ World Series championship celebration through his eyes.
In this genre of the “all access” documentary, Freeman and Betts are about as good as it gets in attracting casual fans — the ones not interested in exit velocities or launch angles, but invested in human interest stories.
Betts’ mother tells the story of how her son tried out for his first youth baseball team, complete with his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles glove, and left in tears after the coach said he was not good enough to make the team.
Freeman’s son Max woke up with a limp one day in July and, by the end of the day, was in a hospital and on a ventilator. He had been diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome.
“I lost my mom to cancer when I was 10 years old, which is awful,” Freeman said. “But when you see your son fighting for his own life at 3 years old? You just don’t think that is going to ever happen.”
Freeman left the Dodgers. Only after Max was discharged — after eight days in the hospital, and on the road to recovery — did Freeman return to the team.
“I would not have come back this year if he had stayed sick,” Freeman said.
On the drive to Dodger Stadium for Game 1 of the World Series, hours after her husband already had arrived there, Chelsea Freeman said: “It’s pretty crazy to see how rock bottom we were a few months ago. And then now to be going to the World Series is pretty surreal.”
And then her husband hit home runs in each of the first four games, en route to earning World Series most valuable player honors.
Before the first game, Chelsea Freeman said his treasured necklace — the one with a strand of hair from his late mother within a cross — had broken. He always played wearing that necklace.
“We had to overnight it to the jeweler,” Chelsea Freeman said.
The instantly legendary home run Freeman hit to win Game 1 — the first walkoff grand slam in World Series history, the one that prompted the “Gibby, meet Freddie!” call from Joe Davis — is presented to viewers in slo-mo, followed by a variety of angles, and almost predictably accompanied by the music from “The Natural.”
The fly ball dropped by Aaron Judge — the most memorable moment from the Yankees’ festival of errors in the fifth inning of the clinching game — is presented here with quick cuts. In five seconds, from five vantage points, Judge drops the ball five times.
If you are a Yankees fan, you probably have no interest in revisiting that moment, or the Series as a whole. If you are a Dodgers fan, you probably do.
The three-part documentary lasts a combined three hours, which is asking a lot of viewers. The series only lasted five games.
If you are a Dodgers fan, at least, you get the championship ending. If you are a Yankees fan, well, you get to see one of your own warning Dodgers fans not to approach him at Yankee Stadium.
“Anybody wearing Dodgers,” he said, “is getting a wedgie.”
Content shared from www.latimes.com.