CHICAGO — Mookie Betts had a race against the clock and felt every last bit of it in the heart of the Dan Ryan Expressway.
He and his wife, Brianna, had welcomed their second child, a boy, this week. Yet there the club’s $365 million man was, in a rush to get to Wrigley Field in time for the Dodgers to return the former MVP to the active roster from paternity leave. For about 40 minutes, he sat in traffic some 3 miles from the ballpark, talking to Freddie Freeman on the phone trying to get an estimated time of arrival — even while living in Los Angeles and knowing how fickle those can be.
With assistance in the form of an hour-long rain delay that pushed back the start of Thursday night’s game, he made it just around the first pitch. He quickly changed into his uniform and popped up in the dugout just after 8 p.m., about an hour and a half after the originally scheduled first pitch.
Within a few hours, he again found himself somewhere new, a place manager Dave Roberts had broached publicly this week and that the Dodgers had discussed internally since Gavin Lux tore his ACL in March.
For the first time in his 1,131 games as a big leaguer, Betts stood at shortstop. Despite coming up as an infielder, he hadn’t even played shortstop in spot duty since he was a fresh-faced…
