Freddie Freeman is 6-foot-5, 220 pounds and one of the eight participants in Monday’s Home Run Derby, the annual event of big and powerful and frantic hacks, and he is fully capable of hitting a baseball a long way in batting practice.
It’s just that he doesn’t. Ever. Freeman chuckled in a phone conversation Friday and said, “I haven’t hit a home run in batting practice in three years.”
Three years? Seriously?
Freeman confirmed this. Three years.
It’s one of the many interesting back stories behind this year’s Derby, related in interviews with all but one of the participants in recent days.