Acuna Jr. admits he won’t miss Freeman
Many have been surprised by the statements that stellar outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr. gave during Wednesday night about his former teammate in the Atlanta Braves, Freddie Freeman.
When questioned by Dominican journalist Yancen Pujols, during an interview conducted via Instagram, about what he will miss most about having Freeman as a teammate, the Venezuelan player kept his answer rather short, but forceful: “Me… nothing.”
Acuña went into detail about the relationship he had with Freeman, indicating that they were not close enough to call them friends, but that their dealings were due to the fact that they played on the same team.
“We were close because we shared in the same stadium, but we had, how to say it… a lot of confrontations,” noted the winner of the National League Rookie of the Year award in the 2018 season. In addition, he explained that the relationship between the two was affected by situations that made him uncomfortable since he moved up to the big team.
“That’s happened all the time (problems in rookie-veteran relationships). When you come up as a rookie there’s always someone (who wants to tell you how to do things). You come in with your minor league flow to wear the black eye (black paint to reduce glare in the eyes), your glasses, your cap a cross chin and there’s a lot of people who see it wrong and you see it as part of the game, you know what I mean?”
“So a lot of veterans applied it (messing with it) and when I came up as a rookie in 2018, they themselves called me into the office and said ‘no, you can’t wear that’ and they wiped it (the eye black) off and I couldn’t say anything.”
When questioned about why he didn’t say anything at the time and stayed quiet, he simply expressed that he knows that this is the way things are and that eventually it will be his turn to be a veteran and be in another position.
“I kept quiet, I couldn’t say anything, you know, I didn’t mention anything. I just said ‘someday I’ll be a veteran’; I’m not saying I’m a veteran now, but right now nobody’s going to come and take something off my face, you know what I mean?” concluded Acuna Jr.
Freeman elected free agency and ended up signing a free agent contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, so it will be quite interesting to see when the two players meet again during the 2022 season.
