September 12, 2025 • 8 mins
Freddie Freeman talks to DV on his birthday. Freddie talks about his upcoming championship ring giveaway, the team's excellent starting pitching, and getting out of a slump at the plate.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And now an exclusive interview with David Bassey for Dodger Talk.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
It's a great day at Oracle Park.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
It's a beautiful birthday day at Oracle Park in San Francisco,
and I'm here with one of my favorite Dodgers. It's
his thirty six birthday. He announced it in San Diego.
September twelfth is my birthday, and September twelfth is the
first day I scoreboard watch.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
And that's the great Freddie Freeman. Happy birthday, Freddyficia.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Thank you, David. We do get the scoreboard.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Watch it.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
It's three and a half games up. Even though it's
two and a half. We own the tiebreakers, so it's
three and a half. Now we can start looking at
the boards.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
I have a lot of life rules, but I feel
like I make a lot of exceptions for people that
I really like, like you, I don't like. And I
don't really celebrate people's birthdays when they announce it, especially
on TV in a clubhouse after a game. But I
will for you, Freddy, I will celebrate you.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
I appreciate it. I only said that is because I
kept getting asked about if I'm following the scoreboards, and
I never do, and so I just came up with
the like we could do it on my birthday, So
I didn't really announce it, but I figured my birthday
is a couple of weeks away from the end of
the season, and I felt like that was a good
time to maybe actually start paying attention to the other
teams because at that time we did not need to
(01:14):
pay attention to that. We needed to focus on ourselves.
And we've been played really good baseball of late, so
now we can start winning ball games and seeing if
the other teams have lost.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Was your birthday always a big day in the Freeman
household for you and your dad?
Speaker 1 (01:27):
It's more of growing up in the Freemans. We never
did like a friend birthday. It was always just family birthday.
So yeah, so my dad FaceTime me today, My oldest
brother called me and sang me Happy birthday. My middle
brother just texted me kind of how I knew how
that would work. But my dad is trying to figure
out when I'm coming home on Sunday because he wants
(01:49):
to come over and see me. So it's more of
a family birthday for me growing up, and then as
I've gotten kids, it's more of a friend so with
Charlie's birthday. You want me to announce this too?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah, when is Charlie's birthday?
Speaker 1 (02:01):
This is Monday. He goes, Daddy, that's your ring day.
Though I said, no, it's your birthday, not my promotional
giveaway for my ring day. He has it all misconstrued.
But yeah, so I haven't done anything. Charlie gave me
his card that he made for me yesterday before I left,
but we didn't really do anything else because the other kids,
the other boys, were at school. So I think we're
(02:23):
gonna wait till Sunday night when I get home.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I love that speaking up your ring night.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
For bubblehead days, you usually have one of your kids
throughout the first pitch, same situation on Monday.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Oh, I don't think so. I think this is just
like a promotional kind of giveaway thing. And I think
I never got asked for any of that, so I
think they might have already since it's the last home saying,
I think they have other people set up for first ceremony,
first pitches, which is which is okay? So Charlie gets
one a year. He did a good job this year,
so we'll ended on that one. And if I get
a bubblehead next year, we'll see. I'm gonna we're gonna
(02:53):
have a problem though, because the other boys just started
t bawl like three days ago, and so I don't
know if I'm gonna be able to keep it to
one like Kirsch, does you know multiple first pitches or
maybe Chelsea catches one with the other boys, my dad
catches another one. So maybe it'll be three first pitches
next year.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I think that's a great plan, and you will have
another bobblehead. Trust me, I've seen some of the yahoos
they give bobbleheads two.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
I'm not answering that one.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Freddie Freeman is our guest. Freddie, you just mentioned you
feel like the team is playing better. Do you feel
like getting back to the West Coast has helped or
do you feel like getting Munsie back and just MOOKI
being Mookie again.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
I think it's I mean, I don't think it's where
we are like in the country is how we're playing.
I think it's what you alluded to, and getting a
couple of guys back, getting Tommy back to But I
mean it's hard not to say it's our starting pitching.
Our starting pitching has been absolutely incredible, and as an offense,
when you see that, you just want to help them out.
And it doesn't matter who you're playing, you want to
(03:53):
get as many runs on the board as you can.
And the last four games, we've been able to play
better baseball as a whole, you know, not like pitching
good one day and not hitting, and then hitting one
day and not pitching. And I think as a whole,
much better baseball has been being played by us over
the last few days.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
You talked about the starting pitching.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
That's gonna make a huge difference for an offense not
to be down early or multiple runs when you have
that type of tone beam set.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, definitely, And I think I think everybody in the
game of baseball, no good pitching is always going to
be good hitting. And that's just the case as an
offensive player. You know, if if a pitcher's locating pitches,
it's you're not gonna really get hits that night. And
when you have guys that we have in our starting rotation,
it's I mean, you can argue that four or five,
six of them could be number ones on every other team.
(04:39):
So when you have number one after number one going going,
and then they're feeding off each other and they're throwing
up zeros. You got. Seems like we have a no
hitter going to the fifth or sixth inning every single
night lately. It feeds and then it carries over to
the offensive, Like, hey, guys, we got to get going.
So I think we're getting going at the right time.
We've been playing good baseball. So if we can play
good baseball in the next couple of weeks leading into October,
(05:00):
I think we're gonna be in a really good spot.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Speaking to number ones, you got another one of those
number one ones on the mound tonight.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Yeah, I mean, Yoshi has been incredible all season long.
What he did last start in Baltimore was amazing, So
we're counting on him to give us another good start.
But you know, facing justin Verlander, we got their big
boys lined up this weekend with Webby and Robbie Wade too,
So I think it's gonna be a wonderful pitching matchups
this whole weekend. But hopefully we come out on top
on all of them.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Hey, by the way, triples, Alley, you had a triple
on the last road trip.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
It's easy there day. I mean, I will go for
it if the right situation is. I usually pick the
spots like there's one out and I'm leaving and I'm
up with no one on and hit one in the gap,
that's where you push it. I usually go on situational
so I can get get the third and get a sacrified.
So if I do hit one in an alley, I
will go for it. But I'm not gonna put with
(05:51):
if no outs and two outs, there's certain situations where
if I'm not gonna be standing up at third, that's where.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I don't really go for it.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Knowing my speed is not the quickest of them. But
we never know. I've seen not only average like two
a year, and I got my two already, so we'll
see what happens. I just I hope I just get it.
If you're saying I hit a triple, it means I
got a hit.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
So that's a good day. I think you will. I
think you will. You got that birthday mojo going today, Freddy?
I like that. I like that.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Maybe I should be my birthday every day.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Hey, before I let you go from what I understand.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
To help yourself get out of slumps as a hitter,
you have to know what you're doing well when things
are going good. Is that true or is there to
a certain extent, Yeah, I don't. I just have heard
guys that don't know when they're going good and what
they're doing right. It's hard to help yourself when things
aren't going right.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, I mean there's little of that. Like some when
you're going hot and you're on a on a heater,
you go in the box and you just standing there
and you can swing and it seems like you just
barrel it and goes into the gap and you're not
really thinking about what you're doing when you're going through it.
That's when you start thinking about like, oh, in my hands,
this and that, and that's kind of when things conspiral
like today. I mean, the last couple of weeks I've
been I've hit some balls hard where guys have been
(07:02):
making some great plays on me, but overall the swings
have been more cutting. Again, So I already have a
plan of what I'm gonna do today. I'm not a
big machine guy, not a big VP on the field guy,
but I'm gonna do my normal routine and then I'm
gonna hit curveball machine today. So if I spin off that,
I'm gonna I'm gonna hit a ground ball every single
time off that machine. So that's gonna help me stay
through the baseball and hopefully lead to more success. And
(07:26):
I think like all you can really do every single
day is have a plan and approach and a process
of how you're gonna go about your work, and you
do your work, and then when the game comes, you
kind of just the game comes and whatever happens, you
can lay your head on your pillow and said, you
did everything you possibly could to give yourself to the
best chance that day. And my plan is to do
my normal routine, hit some hit, some curveball machine, do
(07:46):
my normal routine again in the game, and we'll go
give Justin Rolander a try. So I know what I'm
doing wrong. It's kind of been what I've been battling
for two years now, but somehow I still have managed to,
you know, sneak some hits in there here and there.
You know, I threw a double that chopped over first base,
somehow hit a home run with that swing. So hopefully
I can correct this swing pretty quick, and I'm hoping
(08:07):
the curveball machine helps it and we can get really
hot going into in October.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Do you still use the tea, Freddy.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I do use the tea when it's really bad. I
go back to the basics. My dad always wants me
to use the tee, but I'm more of a flip
guy front flip guy, and then the net drill where
I put an armslengthd away. I'm I'm more in that
being able to because I cannipu. You can manipulate a
baseball off of tea when it's not moving and your swing,
but you can still top balls off of that, so
you can tell. But that's why I'm gonna go over
(08:33):
the curveball machine today and if that doesn't work, I'll
see on the tea tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Thanks a lot for the time, Freddy. I really appreciate
it and great to be with you and share you
on your birthday September twelfth.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
It's in my calendar forever. Thank you. David
And now an exclusive interview with David Bassey for Dodger Talk.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
It's a great day at Oracle Park.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
It's a beautiful birthday day at Oracle Park in San Francisco,
and I'm here with one of my favorite Dodgers. It's
his thirty six birthday. He announced it in San Diego.
September twelfth is my birthday, and September twelfth is the
first day I scoreboard watch.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
And that's the great Freddie Freeman. Happy birthday, Freddyficia.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Thank you, David. We do get the scoreboard.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Watch it.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
It's three and a half games up. Even though it's
two and a half. We own the tiebreakers, so it's
three and a half. Now we can start looking at
the boards.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
I have a lot of life rules, but I feel
like I make a lot of exceptions for people that
I really like, like you, I don't like. And I
don't really celebrate people's birthdays when they announce it, especially
on TV in a clubhouse after a game. But I
will for you, Freddy, I will celebrate you.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
I appreciate it. I only said that is because I
kept getting asked about if I'm following the scoreboards, and
I never do, and so I just came up with
the like we could do it on my birthday, So
I didn't really announce it, but I figured my birthday
is a couple of weeks away from the end of
the season, and I felt like that was a good
time to maybe actually start paying attention to the other
teams because at that time we did not need to
(01:14):
pay attention to that. We needed to focus on ourselves.
And we've been played really good baseball of late, so
now we can start winning ball games and seeing if
the other teams have lost.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Was your birthday always a big day in the Freeman
household for you and your dad?
Speaker 1 (01:27):
It's more of growing up in the Freemans. We never
did like a friend birthday. It was always just family birthday.
So yeah, so my dad FaceTime me today, My oldest
brother called me and sang me Happy birthday. My middle
brother just texted me kind of how I knew how
that would work. But my dad is trying to figure
out when I'm coming home on Sunday because he wants
(01:49):
to come over and see me. So it's more of
a family birthday for me growing up, and then as
I've gotten kids, it's more of a friend so with
Charlie's birthday. You want me to announce this too?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah, when is Charlie's birthday?
Speaker 1 (02:01):
This is Monday. He goes, Daddy, that's your ring day.
Though I said, no, it's your birthday, not my promotional
giveaway for my ring day. He has it all misconstrued.
But yeah, so I haven't done anything. Charlie gave me
his card that he made for me yesterday before I left,
but we didn't really do anything else because the other kids,
the other boys, were at school. So I think we're
(02:23):
gonna wait till Sunday night when I get home.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I love that speaking up your ring night.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
For bubblehead days, you usually have one of your kids
throughout the first pitch, same situation on Monday.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Oh, I don't think so. I think this is just
like a promotional kind of giveaway thing. And I think
I never got asked for any of that, so I
think they might have already since it's the last home saying,
I think they have other people set up for first ceremony,
first pitches, which is which is okay? So Charlie gets
one a year. He did a good job this year,
so we'll ended on that one. And if I get
a bubblehead next year, we'll see. I'm gonna we're gonna
(02:53):
have a problem though, because the other boys just started
t bawl like three days ago, and so I don't
know if I'm gonna be able to keep it to
one like Kirsch, does you know multiple first pitches or
maybe Chelsea catches one with the other boys, my dad
catches another one. So maybe it'll be three first pitches
next year.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I think that's a great plan, and you will have
another bobblehead. Trust me, I've seen some of the yahoos
they give bobbleheads two.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
I'm not answering that one.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Freddie Freeman is our guest. Freddie, you just mentioned you
feel like the team is playing better. Do you feel
like getting back to the West Coast has helped or
do you feel like getting Munsie back and just MOOKI
being Mookie again.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
I think it's I mean, I don't think it's where
we are like in the country is how we're playing.
I think it's what you alluded to, and getting a
couple of guys back, getting Tommy back to But I
mean it's hard not to say it's our starting pitching.
Our starting pitching has been absolutely incredible, and as an offense,
when you see that, you just want to help them out.
And it doesn't matter who you're playing, you want to
(03:53):
get as many runs on the board as you can.
And the last four games, we've been able to play
better baseball as a whole, you know, not like pitching
good one day and not hitting, and then hitting one
day and not pitching. And I think as a whole,
much better baseball has been being played by us over
the last few days.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
You talked about the starting pitching.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
That's gonna make a huge difference for an offense not
to be down early or multiple runs when you have
that type of tone beam set.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, definitely, And I think I think everybody in the
game of baseball, no good pitching is always going to
be good hitting. And that's just the case as an
offensive player. You know, if if a pitcher's locating pitches,
it's you're not gonna really get hits that night. And
when you have guys that we have in our starting rotation,
it's I mean, you can argue that four or five,
six of them could be number ones on every other team.
(04:39):
So when you have number one after number one going going,
and then they're feeding off each other and they're throwing
up zeros. You got. Seems like we have a no
hitter going to the fifth or sixth inning every single
night lately. It feeds and then it carries over to
the offensive, Like, hey, guys, we got to get going.
So I think we're getting going at the right time.
We've been playing good baseball. So if we can play
good baseball in the next couple of weeks leading into October,
(05:00):
I think we're gonna be in a really good spot.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Speaking to number ones, you got another one of those
number one ones on the mound tonight.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Yeah, I mean, Yoshi has been incredible all season long.
What he did last start in Baltimore was amazing, So
we're counting on him to give us another good start.
But you know, facing justin Verlander, we got their big
boys lined up this weekend with Webby and Robbie Wade too,
So I think it's gonna be a wonderful pitching matchups
this whole weekend. But hopefully we come out on top
on all of them.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Hey, by the way, triples, Alley, you had a triple
on the last road trip.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
It's easy there day. I mean, I will go for
it if the right situation is. I usually pick the
spots like there's one out and I'm leaving and I'm
up with no one on and hit one in the gap,
that's where you push it. I usually go on situational
so I can get get the third and get a sacrified.
So if I do hit one in an alley, I
will go for it. But I'm not gonna put with
(05:51):
if no outs and two outs, there's certain situations where
if I'm not gonna be standing up at third, that's where.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I don't really go for it.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Knowing my speed is not the quickest of them. But
we never know. I've seen not only average like two
a year, and I got my two already, so we'll
see what happens. I just I hope I just get it.
If you're saying I hit a triple, it means I
got a hit.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
So that's a good day. I think you will. I
think you will. You got that birthday mojo going today, Freddy?
I like that. I like that.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Maybe I should be my birthday every day.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Hey, before I let you go from what I understand.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
To help yourself get out of slumps as a hitter,
you have to know what you're doing well when things
are going good. Is that true or is there to
a certain extent, Yeah, I don't. I just have heard
guys that don't know when they're going good and what
they're doing right. It's hard to help yourself when things
aren't going right.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, I mean there's little of that. Like some when
you're going hot and you're on a on a heater,
you go in the box and you just standing there
and you can swing and it seems like you just
barrel it and goes into the gap and you're not
really thinking about what you're doing when you're going through it.
That's when you start thinking about like, oh, in my hands,
this and that, and that's kind of when things conspiral
like today. I mean, the last couple of weeks I've
been I've hit some balls hard where guys have been
(07:02):
making some great plays on me, but overall the swings
have been more cutting. Again, So I already have a
plan of what I'm gonna do today. I'm not a
big machine guy, not a big VP on the field guy,
but I'm gonna do my normal routine and then I'm
gonna hit curveball machine today. So if I spin off that,
I'm gonna I'm gonna hit a ground ball every single
time off that machine. So that's gonna help me stay
through the baseball and hopefully lead to more success. And
(07:26):
I think like all you can really do every single
day is have a plan and approach and a process
of how you're gonna go about your work, and you
do your work, and then when the game comes, you
kind of just the game comes and whatever happens, you
can lay your head on your pillow and said, you
did everything you possibly could to give yourself to the
best chance that day. And my plan is to do
my normal routine, hit some hit, some curveball machine, do
(07:46):
my normal routine again in the game, and we'll go
give Justin Rolander a try. So I know what I'm
doing wrong. It's kind of been what I've been battling
for two years now, but somehow I still have managed to,
you know, sneak some hits in there here and there.
You know, I threw a double that chopped over first base,
somehow hit a home run with that swing. So hopefully
I can correct this swing pretty quick, and I'm hoping
(08:07):
the curveball machine helps it and we can get really
hot going into in October.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Do you still use the tea, Freddy.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I do use the tea when it's really bad. I
go back to the basics. My dad always wants me
to use the tee, but I'm more of a flip
guy front flip guy, and then the net drill where
I put an armslengthd away. I'm I'm more in that
being able to because I cannipu. You can manipulate a
baseball off of tea when it's not moving and your swing,
but you can still top balls off of that, so
you can tell. But that's why I'm gonna go over
(08:33):
the curveball machine today and if that doesn't work, I'll
see on the tea tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Thanks a lot for the time, Freddy. I really appreciate
it and great to be with you and share you
on your birthday September twelfth.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
It's in my calendar forever. Thank you. David
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