In 2018, towards the tip of a decade through which Mike Trout was the most effective participant in baseball, Main League Baseball reckoned with its failure to remodel him right into a nationwide icon. Commissioner Rob Manfred inelegantly however bluntly urged why the league had struggled to market Trout.
“Player marketing requires one thing for sure: the player,” Manfred stated then.
The Angels shot again at Manfred, with a press release — crafted partially by proprietor Arte Moreno — that vigorously defended Trout: “We applaud him for prioritizing his personal values over commercial self-promotion.”
Neither Trout nor every other participant owes his staff or the league something greater than his greatest effort on the sphere. Nevertheless, the higher followers get to know their favourite gamers as personalities, the better for the league to broaden its enchantment past the diehards.
That is nothing new. Half a century in the past, ABC used its trademark “Up Close and Personal” segments to get People invested in nameless Olympic athletes.
In that sense, Apple’s documentary on the 2024 World Collection is successful. The three-part sequence referred to as “Fight for Glory” premieres Thursday on Apple TV+.
Additionally listed within the credit: Chelsea Freeman, spouse of Freddie; and Brianna Betts, spouse of Mookie. Digital camera crews adopted the households of the Dodgers stars: on the drive to the video games, within the stands in the course of the video games, across the staff after the video games, and even at residence.
Apple put cameras wherever it might and put microphones on as many individuals because it might, together with managers and coaches, umpires, broadcasters, and reporters. Jack Harris, who covers the Dodgers for The Instances, welcomed a digital camera operator into his automotive and did an interview as he drove to Dodger Stadium.
Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts, left, and first baseman Freddie Freeman share amusing throughout a sport towards the Cleveland Guardians in August 2023.
(Nick Cammett / Related Press)
Freeman is as open with the media as any participant within the league, and Betts already has made his mark within the media world. His budding media empire features a podcast and a YouTube channel. He used the previous as a discussion board for teammates to evaluation the World Collection expertise and the way the Yankees collapsed within the sequence, and he used the latter to ask followers to see the Dodgers’ World Collection championship celebration by means of his eyes.
On this style of the “all access” documentary, Freeman and Betts are about nearly as good because it will get in attracting informal followers — those not excited about exit velocities or launch angles, however invested in human curiosity tales.
Betts’ mom tells the story of how her son tried out for his first youth baseball staff, full together with his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles glove, and left in tears after the coach stated he was not ok to make the staff.
Freeman’s son Max awakened with a limp in the future in July and, by the tip of the day, was in a hospital and on a ventilator. He had been recognized with a uncommon neurological dysfunction referred to as Guillain-Barre syndrome.
“I lost my mom to cancer when I was 10 years old, which is awful,” Freeman stated. “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. Solely after Max was discharged — after eight days within the hospital, and on the highway to restoration — did Freeman return to the staff.
“I would not have come back this year if he had stayed sick,” Freeman stated.
On the drive to Dodger Stadium for Sport 1 of the World Collection, hours after her husband already had arrived there, Chelsea Freeman stated: “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.”
After which her husband hit residence runs in every of the primary 4 video games, en path to incomes World Collection Most worthy participant honors.
Earlier than the primary sport, Chelsea Freeman stated his treasured necklace — the one with a strand of hair from his late mom inside a cross — had damaged. He all the time performed sporting that necklace.
“We had to overnight it to the jeweler,” Chelsea Freeman stated.
The immediately legendary residence run Freeman hit to win Sport 1 — the primary walkoff grand slam in World Collection historical past, the one which prompted the “Gibby, meet Freddie!” name from Joe Davis — is offered to viewers in slo-mo, adopted by a wide range of angles, and nearly predictably accompanied by the music from “The Natural.”
The fly ball dropped by Aaron Decide — essentially the most memorable second from the Yankees’ competition of errors within the fifth inning of the clinching sport — is offered right here with fast cuts. In 5 seconds, from 5 vantage factors, Decide drops the ball 5 occasions.
In case you are a Yankees fan, you in all probability have no real interest in revisiting that second, or the Collection as a complete. In case you are a Dodgers fan, you in all probability do.
The three-part documentary lasts a mixed three hours, which is asking a number of viewers. The sequence solely lasted 5 video games.
In case you are a Dodgers fan, not less than, you get the championship ending. In case you are a Yankees fan, effectively, you get to see one in all your personal warning Dodgers followers to not method him at Yankee Stadium.
“Anybody wearing Dodgers,” he stated, “is getting a wedgie.”
