BOSTON — Give it up, Yankees Universe.
Your negative karma toward David Ortiz is officially as useless as a government-designed website.
You can’t stop Big Papi. You only can hope to defame him.
The Red Sox have regained baseball’s mountaintop, and their beloved (in New England, at least) designated hitter occupies the throne. When the Red Sox thumped the Cardinals Wednesday night, 6-1 in World Series Game 6, they claimed their third title in 10 years, completed a rags-to-riches saga that began with finishing in last place in 2012, clinched at Fenway Park for the first time since 1918 and made Ortiz the only living player with three rings collected in a Red Sox uniform.
Oh, and Ortiz won his first World Series Most Valuable Player award, after posting a brain-melting slash line of .688/.760/1.188.
“I would be doing him a disservice to try to put him into words,” Red Sox second-year general manager Ben Cherington said of his team’s longest-tenured player.
Added first-year Boston manager John Farrell: “Beyond the at-bats, it is the presence. He is the link to a lot of championships now.”
“This season,” Ortiz said, “has been a box full of surprises.”
Except Ortiz’s continued success can’t be considered a surprise, even at age 37. For the whole month, he put up a .353/.500/.706 slash line with five homers and 13 RBIs. On this night, as Ortiz said, “The rest of the team took over.”
With the Cardinals finally surrendering on the Ortiz front, issuing him three intentional walks, one more careful non-intentional walk and striking him out in the sixth inning (because the Cardinals were trailing, 6-0, by then) he got to act as a bodyguard of sort while Shane Victorino, Stephen Drew and Mike Napoli delivered the big hits.
Those are three first-year Red Sox, you might have noticed. Ortiz spoke lovingly of this group, which he deemed less talented than the 2004 and 2007 champions. “But we have guys capable of staying focused and doing the little things,” he said. “When you play with a group of guys like that, it’s special.”
He has been supremely special during the Red Sox’s rise, fall and re-rise since 2003, a non-tender by the Twins who signed with first-year Boston general manager Theo Epstein for $1.25 million. And on the other side of the Rivalry, he has become a piñata, a source of scorn for the notion he “skates” — particularly on the issue of illegal performance-enhancing drugs — while his New York counterpart Alex Rodriguez can’t cross Park Avenue without finding trouble and adding haters to his impressive stable.
Look, part of it comes down to the reality Ortiz generally treats people better than Rodriguez does and therefore owns a considerably smaller list of enemies. But the bigger component is Ortiz simply hasn’t been caught. Just as with A-Rod, the reported failed test from 2003 is absolutely meaningless except that it violated Ortiz’s privacy. You don’t count it for either player.
The fact Ortiz still rakes at his advanced age? Either he’s accomplishing it solely through legal means, or he has found a way to beat MLB’s tests. If it’s the latter, perhaps that will catch up to him someday, perhaps not. But goodness, to get all worked up over what he might or might not be doing, without a failed test or the sort of evidence that brought down the 13 Biogenesis clients? What a colossal waste of time.
With 17 career postseason home runs and a .295/.409/.553 slash line in 356 plate appearances, added to a regular-season career in which he has tallied 44.2 wins above replacement (as per Baseball-Reference.com), Ortiz has propelled himself into the Cooperstown conversation.
Nevertheless, he’s far from a slam dunk, especially because gridlock figures to suffocate the ballot for decades to come. Yet if you don’t consider him at least worthy of discussion, then you need to lower your pinstriped blinders.
Unless we get far more information to substantiate your accusations, Big Papi is too legit to quit. An all-time Red Sox, an icon of his time. Maybe next year, he can try to tie the all-time Boston record of four rings, add to his WAR and raise a few more Bronx blood pressures.
He’s a reigning champion, the current Mr. October. You’re better off accepting the truth than fighting it any longer.