LOS ANGELES — A sliver of the current world is Mookie Betts backlit in blue, his hands clasped politely before him, speaking softly, a microphone missing chunks of his sentences as he leans back or trails off.
This must all be so strange for him.
Sixty games and then another month from free agency …
“We gotta get to the season first,” he says Monday afternoon.
And just outside a couple weeks before he wears a Los Angeles Dodgers uniform.
“I still now have my doubts,” he says.
Then there’s that, too, on top of him being in Los Angeles and not in Boston, on top of his buddy, David Price, having chosen to stay home instead, on top of any kind of season echoing across an empty Dodger Stadium, and on top of the fact that had he stayed home like Price he’d have lost the service time necessary to reach free agency.