NEW YORK — Fans crowded into Dodger Stadium for Friday’s World Series opener, among them the wives and girlfriends of the players on the home team. One of the girlfriends was missing, though: She had a big game, too.
Ben Casparius was nothing but supportive.
“She’s in the midst of their season,” he said. “They’re gearing up for the playoffs, too.”
Casparius, 25, the Dodgers’ rookie reliever, is dating Erin Matson, the field hockey coach at the University of North Carolina. The two met as students at North Carolina and, the way Matson tells the story, they finally became a couple just as he was transferring to the University of Connecticut.
Looking back at the Dodgers’ path through the postseason before their victory over the New York Yankees in the 2024 World Series.
“We’ve been doing long distance for almost six years now,” she said, laughing. “I don’t know what’s quite wrong with us.”
During the National League championship series, Joe Davis told the national television audience that Matson was “the Michael Jordan of field hockey.”
Said Matson: “Around Carolina, that’s pretty normal. It’s not the first time I’ve heard it.”
If Jordan set the standard for excellence at North Carolina, Matson might have transcended it. In 2022, when Matson won her fourth national championship as a player, she recreated a picture Jordan had taken after his fourth NBA championship, holding up four fingers, with a victory cigar in the mouth. The school titled the picture: “Just GOAT things.”
Said Casparius: “Whenever we go to a basketball game in Chapel Hill, she’s on the big screen at least a couple times.”
In 2022, she graduated from North Carolina’s school of journalism and media. In 2024, she was its commencement speaker.
In between, when North Carolina’s longtime field hockey coach retired, Matson invited herself to apply and got the job, something akin to one of John Wooden’s seniors immediately replacing him at UCLA.
Matson, 24, was a three-time player of the year. The Tar Heels had won 10 national championships, including four in the previous five years. In Matson’s first year as coach, the Tar Heels won another championship. This year, they’re 14-0.
“She was able to prove she could bring together a group of girls who, I want to say, at the time, at least 75% of them had been her teammates,” Casparius said. “It’s definitely an interesting situation when you’re able to gain that respect. She did it. She crushed it.”
Her career as an athlete may not be done. She could receive consideration for a spot on the U.S. field hockey team that would compete in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
The Dodgers and New York Yankees will play Major League Baseball’s starriest World Series in decades.
If Matson has shined in the field hockey spotlight, Casparius has toiled in the baseball shadows.
The Dodgers selected him in the fifth round of the 2021 draft, and he has slowly worked his way up their minor league ladder, up one level each year. He never has appeared in a spring training game for the Dodgers.
What did Dodgers manager Dave Roberts know about Casparius when he joined the team?
“I knew his (girlfriend) was a great field hockey player, and she coaches at UNC,” Roberts said. “That’s what I knew. And he had a good fastball.”
Not to say he might have been overlooked, but he said MLB Pipeline never included him among its ranking of the Dodgers’ top 30 prospects until “three or four days before I got called up.”
That was in August. He pitched three regular season games for them, and now he has pitched three postseason games for them.
In one of them, Matson was watching on television and thought she noticed a spot of blood on Casparius’ jersey. She asked him about it in a telephone call that night.
“Yeah,” Casparius confessed in the conversation, “I had a bloody nose my whole outing.”
Matson shot back, with laughter: “You’re a psycho.”
It comes as absolutely no surprise to her that she fell in love with a baseball player. Her father was a baseball player. Her brother currently pitches in the Cleveland Guardians organization.
Her boyfriend is a baseball player. So was her ex-boyfriend.
“I have a type,” she said, jokingly.
She has a boyfriend in the World Series, too.
After Shohei Ohtani left Game 2 of the World Series with a partially dislocated left shoulder, the team is optimistic that he’ll be back in the lineup for Game 3 on Monday.
“He lets me be me, and he will always support what I do,” Matson said. “He would never want me to stop doing what I love. It makes it easy for me.
“We’ll figure out the long distance. We’ll figure out the airline miles. We’ll figure it out so he can chase his dream, too.”
Matson said she plans to attend Game 3 of the World Series on Monday, fly back to North Carolina to run practice Tuesday, return to New York for Game 4 on Tuesday night, fly back to North Carolina to run practice Wednesday, then return to New York for Game 5 on Wednesday night.
“We’re going to be hunkering down,” she said, “and taking lots of Vitamin C.”
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