Prospect Meadows<\/a>, a baseball and softball complex in Marion.<\/p>\n\u201cHe [Dakota] was all over the country, so he [Rick] saw all these beautiful complexes, you know, throughout the United States. And I think he thought why don\u2019t we have that here?\u201d said Jack Roeder, Prospect Meadows president and CEO.<\/p>\n
While he was older than the kids that typically play at the complex, Roeder said Freese was a familiar face around Prospect Meadows.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe would come out here and practice during the day, sometimes off the mounds, before he went to college or wherever he was going to. So yeah, I had a lot of nice visits with him. And like I said, he was a great kid. Rick, it\u2019s a wonderful family. And Rick was just everything to Dakota, helping him, you know, play baseball throughout high school and traveling around the country and really a premier player,\u201d Roeder said.<\/p>\n
Roeder said the community is still processing the loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that everyone was just really kind of in shock. When someone is 33 years old, you just don\u2019t expect that to happen. Everyone\u2019s kind of just really numb, quite frankly,\u201d Roeder said.<\/p>\n
Roeder said they hope to honor Freese at the fields in some way, but until then, those who knew him are holding on to the memories.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of my favorite memories is Rick used to catch and he didn\u2019t have any catcher\u2019s equipment on, he\u2019d just have his work clothes on and the catching glove and the kids throwing 95 miles an hour,\u201d Roeder said. \u201cJust a really nice kid. Always enjoyed being around him. Very polite. Some good memories.\u201d<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KCRG. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MARION, Iowa (KCRG) – Friends of Dakota Freese\u2019s family are remembering the former minor league baseball player whose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[87963,87962,9,24,63,87964,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-223831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-cedar-river-drowning","tag-dakota-freese","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-prospect-meadows-marion","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}