It’s the Atlanta Braves first baseman… like you’ve never seen before

The Atlanta Braves truly have a special player at first base — and this weekend you can experience that at a whole new level.

He’s been a great interview.  He’s got a personality like few others on the field.  Yet even these glimpses into the life of Atlanta Braves star Freddie Freeman tell you about him.

This weekend, that changes.

On Sunday afternoon — both at 2pm and 5pm EDT — ESPN will debut an “E60” episode that features Freddie Freeman and members of his family… an excellent introduction to their Sunday night game featuring the Braves and the Phillies from Truist Park that starts at 7pm.

If you can’t catch either of these showings, the ESPN App will have it available “on demand” until May 4th, when the program goes to ESPN+.

ESPN has reached out to us to give us some hints of what we’ll see in this hour-long look at the Freeman family, which more-or-less begins at the bottom when the Freeman clan lost mother Rosemary… and then things almost got worse from there:

"When Freeman was named NL MVP last November, he was struck by the full circle nature of his own life’s story. Growing up in Villa Park, Calif., Freeman had it all – until he didn’t. The devastating loss of his mother when Freddie was only 10 years old, and the near loss of his father just two years later, sent Freeman on a journey to replicate what he once had: a complete family – all while striving to achieve baseball greatness."

It was a highly emotional time — and it clearly still is, as you can see from this clip:

The Atlanta Braves: stars on pedestals

As fans, we tend to look up to our ballplayers — from any sport — as being somehow larger than life or nearly immune to the day-to-day struggles that we all face.

Heck, I can think of my own family literally on the same day that I saw Freeman in person for the first time:  it was 2009 while he and Jason Heyward were roaring up through the minor leagues and playing for AA Mississippi.  They truly looked like men among boys — and played like it.

Two days later, my son was diagnosed with leukemia.  But for that night, those Braves prospects made us forget about what else might have been going on with us that weekend (and yes:  my son is now a 12-year survivor!).

But as we’ve seen with Freeman, even players who perform at the highest levels of the game are not exempt from their own challenges.  In fact, they are often expected to keep going… despite whatever else may be going on.

ESPN’s Buster Olney peels back that curtain with Freddie and his family.

It will almost certainly make you appreciate what he does all the more.