ATLANTA — It's almost hard to believe that 10 years have passed since the City of Atlanta was immobilized by a meager two-and-a-half inches of snow.
As the snow began to fall in the early afternoon hours of Jan. 28, 2014, people began to leave their jobs, and parents began to pick their kids up from school -- which resulted in the culmination of everyone heading out the doors at the exact same time to get home, which created the perfect storm for utter disarray on the roads.
As many fans may recall, one of those drivers was former Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman, a fan favorite for many years and a World Series champion. Now with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Freeman recently retold the wild Snow Jam story -- one that eventually led to the creation of its own Braves bobblehead -- to Dodgers teammate Mookie Betts on Betts' podcast during the 2023 Major League Baseball season.
"Chipper and I used to live next to each other 40 minutes north of Turner Field," Freeman told Betts on the On Base with Mookie Betts podcast. "We gotta go to Turner Field because there's a luncheon that we gotta go and talk."
Freeman, just like most drivers that day in Atlanta, saw the alerts that it was about to snow that afternoon. Also, just like most drivers in the city, little did he know what he was about to be in for.
"We got alerts that were like, 'Hey, it's about to snow.' I had to try and get home. And it wasn't like snowing downpour. It was ice," Freeman recalled to Betts on his podcast.
Little did he know how long he was going to be stuck and the things he would be forced to do while trapped on the frigid, icy Atlanta roads.
"So, it took about nine hours for me to get off of the exit where I lived. Nine hours," Freeman said. "There was peeing in bottles. You know, what are you gonna do?"
As Freeman was able to get off his exit, the roads were still dangerously icy and tough to travel on. He describes the moment he received a text from Braves third baseman and MLB Hall of Famer Chipper Jones with a rescue mission in mind.
"Finally, I got to like a shopping center. My phone was dying -- I had one percent left. Chipper texts me and says, 'Where are you?' And I said, 'I don't know the exact location,' but I took a picture, sent it, and then boom, the phone died. Forty-five minutes later, there is a guy coming in camo on an ATV, and it's Chipper in full camo," Freeman said, laughing. "And he's like, 'Let's go, we're going home.'"
In the picture that most Braves fans have seen by now, Freeman is wearing a leather jacket and Louis Vuitton shoes while riding on the back of Chipper's ATV. Freeman said that his teammate was going as fast as he could while he was right behind him, shivering in the 20-degree temps.
"Atlanta wasn't prepared for the snow," Freeman said. "And then they made a bobblehead out of it."
