Freddie Freeman was equipped with a towel as he walked into a Dodger Stadium interview room Monday afternoon. An emotional sort in the best of times, the veteran first baseman knew he wouldn’t get a minute into a recounting of the brutal ordeal his 3-year-old son, Maximus, went through over the past 10 days without crying.
He was right … and he didn’t care. The tears flowed, and so did the gratitude of an eight-time All-Star who returned to the team on Monday, his son home from the hospital and on a long but hopeful road of recovery from Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological condition in which the body’s immune system attacks the nerves.
“Max is doing all right … but he’s got to relearn how to do pretty much everything,” Freeman said, pausing as he rubbed his eyes and collected his thoughts. “Terrible syndrome, Guillain-Barré … but it’s a good thing I’m here, because it means things are trending better. No one should have to go through this, especially with a 3-year-old.”
Freeman and his wife, Chelsea, noticed Max walking with a limp on the morning of July 22, a Monday, and by that night, Max couldn’t walk. The symptoms, according to an initial visit to a doctor, were consistent with transient synovitis, which can cause a pain in the hip after a viral infection.
By Tuesday, Max couldn’t sit up, and by Wednesday night, July 24, while Freeman was playing against the San Francisco Giants, Max had stopped eating and drinking and was taken to the emergency room. Doctors still suspected transient synovitis and recommended Tylenol.
Freeman played a day game against the Giants on Thursday, July 25 and traveled with the Dodgers to Houston that night for the start of an eight-game, three-city trip. But he rushed home the following day after Max’s condition “rapidly declined,” according to a family Instagram post, and he was sent to the emergency room.
“They were ready to call an ambulance for him, because they didn’t think he was going to be able to breathe that long,” Freeman said, again fighting back tears. “So I immediately ran and told Scott [Akasaki, traveling secretary] to get me home.”
By the time Freeman arrived at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County, Max was experiencing paralysis, which was affecting his breathing, and was placed on a ventilator and a feeding tube.
“The hardest part was seeing my 3-year-old son needing help to breathe, when five days earlier, he was doing front flips and everything,” Freeman said. “You just wish you could switch. You really do. Like I’ve been through a lot in my life. I lost my mom when I was 10, but you can’t really compare any of this because both are awful.
“But when it’s your son or your child, and he can’t breathe on his own, that was hard. … I know Dodgers fans wouldn’t like this, but I would gladly strike out with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 of the World Series 300 million times in a row than to see that again.”
There was encouraging news, though, when doctors diagnosed Max with Guillain-Barré and immediately started treatments. Max responded, and his condition improved early last week. Within 48 hours of experiencing full-body paralysis, Max was excavated from his breathing tube and taken off a ventilator.
“It was [last] Wednesday at 10:46 p.m., I’ll never forget — he had his ventilator pulled, and within six minutes, he was sitting on me,” Freeman said. “I can’t tell you how good that felt, to be able to hold my son again. That was a special time, just knowing how hard he fought in those five days.
“When he was born, we were trying to figure out a name. We had two kids at that time, and Chelsea came upon ‘Maximus.’ I was like, ‘That’s a strong name.’ I said I didn’t know it was gonna have to be proved true within four years of his life, with how strong this little boy is. It’s heartbreaking. It really is.”
Freeman, who had started every one of the team’s first 104 games, missed the entire road trip in which the Dodgers lost five of eight games at Houston, San Diego and Oakland.
But with Max home from the hospital, Freeman returned to the team on Monday and was greeted by teammates and coaches who wore Dodgers blue #MaxStrong shirts with No. 5 Freeman on the back during batting practice before the series opener against the Philadelphia Phillies.
“I don’t know whose idea it was, but that was the first time I cried today, when I walked in and saw those,” Freeman said of the T-shirts. “It means a lot. The support from this organization has been … there’s no words. I can’t even put it into words, really. Things happen. I’m just so glad that he was able to be at CHOC.
“That team of doctors and nurses, I just can’t thank them enough. I can’t thank the medicine enough, because that’s what helped. Them knowing to do that was huge. I’m sure I’m going to be crying a lot more throughout the day, so bear with me. But there’s no words to put into what the Dodgers have meant to us and our family over these nine days.”
Freeman was among the team’s hottest hitters when he left the team, and he entered Monday night’s game with a .288 average, .888 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, 16 homers, 26 doubles and 67 RBIs on the season.
In his absence, a Dodgers offense that was already playing without the injured Mookie Betts and Max Muncy hit only .213 (65 for 301) on the eight-game trip, the fourth-worst average in baseball in that span.
The team’s .340 slugging percentage ranked 29th among 30 teams in that span, its .652 OPS ranked 24th, and the Dodgers scored only 36 runs in the eight games, 10 of them coming in Saturday night’s blowout of the A’s.