Down to his last strike  David Freese overcame his own
indifference, injuries and three brushes with the law  Updated:
December 16, 2011, 10:23 AM ET By Molly Knight | ESPN The
Magazine  David FreeseBryce Duffy for ESPN The MagazineFreese
calls the Eat-Rite Diner a St. Louis institution. Now he is too.
This story appears in the Dec. 26 "Year in Sports" issue of ESPN
The Magazine.  AT 1 A.M. ON A FROSTBITTEN THANKSGIVING MORNING
in St. Louis, David Freese waits on a downtown sidewalk while an
autograph seeker runs back to her car to look for a Sharpie.
Freese and several friends have just left a bar that was half-
empty when they arrived an hour earlier but swelled to capacity
when patrons began texting their friends that the local boy from
Lafayette High-turned-World Series MVP was there. As he sat on a
corner bar stool in jeans and a button-down sipping ice water
through a straw, the room closed in on him.Suddenly he was the
center of it, surrounded by fans, many of them tipsy, edging
closer for a photograph