Interview With Atlanta Braves Freddie Freeman On The All-Star Game
By Jeff Schafer
Thanks to the League League World Series and their official partner Ace Brand, I was able to have a phone interview with the Atlanta Braves first basemen, Freddie Freeman, Thursday afternoon. Freeman and ACE™ Brand, an official sponsor of the Little League World Series, is providing Little Leaguers and baseball fans nationwide the opportunity to create a keepsake digital baseball card to commemorate their favorite moments on the diamond. Fans can make their own card by visiting MyACEAllStars.ACEbrandsports.
Freddie and I spoke on many topics but specifically for this post, I asked him about the All-Star game and getting Justin Upton into the game.
What your feelings after being selected into your second All-Star game and what does it mean to you to represent the Atlanta Braves in such a high atmosphere?
“It’s definitely an honor,” Freddie said. “I’ve had two different experiences in getting into the All-Star game – after last year with the fans voting me in and then this year with the players – it’s definitely a cool, cool experience and hopefully I don’t get hurt like last year in the next four games. But we have Justin Upton in the final vote this year so we have to get him in so that I have another teammate.”
The interview took place at 12:30pm Thursday afternoon midway through the Twitter firestorm so at the time we were all still voting and hoping Upton would be victorious with the fan vote.
I asked him if he was on Twitter today voting and he said “Yes, I actually just tweeted right before this phone call”. Looking through his timeline you can see he did his part with the #VoteJUp poll.
The support Justin is getting from teammates and fans on Twitter is insane. How do you think Justin views the support he’s being given?
“It’s a cool thing and to see all the athletes and celebrities and all the fans pouring in their support, it makes you feel good and no matter what the result was last year I was happy, I didn’t even know people knew who I was and then to see all the support and love that came in was great. And I’m sure Justin is feeling the same way. We are doing everything we can to get him into the game and in my opinion and a lot of people’s opinion, he deserves to be in there.”
Justin won the fan vote on Twitter as Alan had mentioned earlier by almost 300,000 tweets but we must of lacked in the other two options to vote. Anthony Rizzo won the NL fan vote with 8.8 million votes.
“The support from the fan base and the support all around, it’s been awesome,” Upton said before the game. “I think we did a pretty good job but at the end of the day, everyone deserved to be there (of the five players up for the fan vote). You got people from Big Boi from Outkast to Jason Aldean which is the complete opposite site of the spectrum with country music. So it was really cool.”
Upton seemed to be on Twitter, as well as most Braves players, to try and encourage fans to get their tweet votes in.
“I was on twitter and retweeting people and helping out,” Justin said. “It was an interesting day and I had fun with it. I have great teammates and they supported me throughout the day. I had a blast with it.”