The renewed attention to the robe photo sparked another conversation among Dodgers fans on social media, Reddit forums, and on sports talk radio and podcasts. Many began lobbying for the image to become a promotional bobblehead giveaway next season. Others argued it deserves something even more permanent: a statue outside Dodger Stadium in the centerfield plaza alongside Jackie Robinson and Sandy Koufax should Friedman guide the franchise to a third consecutive World Series title this October.

But all the renewed chatter around the robe photo begged a simple question:

How did a throwaway joke inside a hotel suite on the Las Vegas Strip become one of the most iconic images in modern Dodgers history?

The California Post has the answer.

Where Andrew Friedman’s Robe Originated

Let’s flashback to Monday, December 10, 2018.

The MLB Winter Meetings had just begun, transforming Mandalay Bay into baseball’s annual rumor factory. Bryce Harper’s free agency dominated every lobby conversation. Manny Machado, whom Friedman had acquired five months earlier at the trade deadline, was also a free agent. Every executive was being chased for answers they had little interest in sharing.

Among the reporters covering the meetings was Arash Markazi, then a senior writer for ESPN and now the founder and CEO of The Sporting Tribune.

The Dodgers communications staff informed reporters that Friedman would hold his daily media session inside his hotel suite at 5:00 PM.

About 15 to 20 reporters filtered into the suite and gathered in the living room waiting for the Dodgers executive.

Friedman was nowhere to be seen.

Then he emerged from the bedroom not in a suit, not in a Dodgers polo, but a bathrobe.

“We all went up to his hotel suite and we gathered around the area where you walk into the room,” Markazi recalled in an exclusive interview with the California Post this week. “Friedman was not there when we entered the room. He was either in the bedroom or bathroom or wherever, so there’s about 15 to 20 of us gathered around waiting for him to come and suddenly he entered the room wearing a robe.”

Markazi said the room immediately erupted in laughter as Friedman began posing for pictures.

“Winter meetings, there’s a weird dynamic where people are talking even more about baseball during those days,” Friedman told Doug McKain years later for his reasoning behind the gag. “It sets up a weird dynamic where we meet with the media at 5:00 p.m. every day and because we don’t really want to say, ‘Hey we met with this player. Or we made this offer. Or we met with this team and we’re trying to trade for this player.’ It’s hard to say anything.

“So I decided to have some fun. I put the robe on and told them, ‘Spa Day today. No meetings with teams or agents and unfortunately that’s all I got.”

In the room, Markazi said the joke landed immediately. He decided to take several photos of Friedman posing in the robe that he shared with the California Post in never-before-seen outtakes from the suite.

But when Markazi got back to the lobby after the Q & A with Friedman and was looking through his camera roll, deciding which photo to post on his Twitter/X account, one frame stood out above the rest.

It was Friedman reclining in his chair, smiling, his chin resting on his hand like he was quietly contemplating his next big offseason move.

On the table beside him sat an unexpected co-star: a magazine featuring Lady Gaga on the cover.

Markazi posted the picture with a simple caption.

“Checking in with Andrew Friedman at the Baseball Winter Meetings in Las Vegas.”

Nothing happened.

The tweet generated little attention beyond a handful of likes. A few dozen people bookmarked it. The internet quickly moved on.

For more than a year, the photograph disappeared.

Then came February 2020.

Friedman acquired former American League MVP Mookie Betts and Cy Young Award winner David Price from the Boston Red Sox.

Almost overnight, fans rediscovered the robe photo and began posting it as shorthand for another example of a Friedman masterclass.

Then, after the Dodgers won the 2020 World Series, it resurfaced again.

Friedman Photo Takes on Life of Itself

It reached another level of popularity on December 11, 2023, almost five years to the date the original photo was taken.

Hours after the Dodgers stunned the baseball world by signing two-way sensation Shohei Ohtani to a historic, 10-year, $700 million contract, the team’s official X account posted the robe photo for the first time.

The post eclipsed 1.2 million views within 24 hours and racked up tens of thousands of likes, going viral and permanently transforming the image from an inside joke into Dodgers mythological lore.

The organization has returned to it repeatedly ever since, including after signing Yoshinobu Yamamoto and following the Skubal trade. The latter has already surpassed one million views.

“I had no expectations,” Markazi said. “It’s a funny picture of Andrew Friedman in his hotel room wearing a robe, as a joke, and kind of posing, like he had just come from the spa. It was a nothing tweet. It didn’t even gain traction that day.

“Now it has become so much more than the picture it originally was.”

Markazi believes fans no longer see a robe. They see something more.

“The picture has come to embody the big bold moves he’s made as a GM,” he said. “He’s the conquering hero. He’s cool and calm under pressure. He might as well be holding a pipe. Now, whenever there’s a big signing or trade, it’s the picture the fans tweet out.”

As for the fans lobbying for a robe bobblehead or even a statue?

Markazi doesn’t think they’re crazy.

“That would just be such an iconic thing,” he said. “I think of Jerry Tarkanian’s statue outside Thomas & Mack Center biting a towel. Or Red Auerbach smoking a cigar. That’s become the robe for Andrew Friedman. It’s iconic now and it always comes back to the robe. The robe has come to represent so much more than what it was in the moment.”

He paused before smiling.

“I love that the fans love this. I love that this picture has gone viral. I think if they make a bobblehead it would be really cool. I just think it’s super cool. It always makes me smile. It always makes me laugh.”

Friedman has embraced it, too.

When the picture first surfaced in 2018, he said the first person to text him wasn’t another executive.

It was his mother.

“My mom texted me afterwards and said, ‘I don’t understand why you’re wearing a robe and did you go to a Lady Gaga concert?’”

His response?

“I don’t know why that magazine is there, but no. I did not.”

Eight years later, one harmless joke has become something far more enduring.

The robe is no longer just a robe.

For millions of Dodgers fans, it’s a victory cigar before the championship celebration even begins.

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