Papi gets October au revoir
The sadness of last at-bats by iconic baseball stars is that some of them are Vegas extravaganzas being staged out in the woods.
That’s what happened to Ted Williams. Yes, The Greatest Hitter That Ever Lived did famously hit a home run in his last atbat, and in doing so inspired a classic piece of essaying by John Updike. But alas: The Kid bade Hub adieu on a humdrum Wednesday afternoon in which only 10,454 souls bothered to show up at Fenway Park.
And though the Red Sox emerged with a 5-4 victory over Baltimore on Sept. 28, 1960, it didn’t mean a thing. The Sox headed to the Bronx for a three-game, season-ending series against the Yankees (Ted didn’t play) and got swept, ending up 65-89 and in seventh place in the eight-team American League.
For all he meant to the Red Sox, Ted Williams deserved more. Next up: Carl Yastrzemski. Writing for the Portland Press Herald, I covered Captain Carl’s final big league game, a 3-1 Red Sox victory over the Cleveland Indians on Oct. 2, 1983, at Fenway. I remember so much about that game — how various Yaz family members did the public-addressing each time No. 8 came up, how Yaz singled off beefy Bud Anderson in the third inning for what turned out to be his final hit, and how, in the seventh, in what would be his last at-bat, he swung at a 3-0 Dan Spillner pitch up by his eyeballs and popped it to second.
Poor Spillner. He was so nervous, he couldn’t get the ball over the plate.
Poor Yaz. He didn’t want his last trip to the plate to be a base on balls, so he did what he rarely did during his 23 seasons in the big leagues — swing at a bad pitch.
But that wasn’t all. As happened with Ted Williams, Yaz closed out his career on a bad ballclub. The ’83 Red Sox were 78-84, good for sixth place in the seven-team AL East.
For all he meant to the Red Sox, Carl Yastrzemski deserved more.
Which brings us, finally, to David Ortiz. And for all he has meant to the Red Sox, he deserves more . . . and will get more.
Unlike Williams, unlike Yaz, Ortiz will not have his last at-bat take place in a drab regular-season finale between two sub.-500 ballclubs. Oh, to be sure, today’s series finale between the Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays at Fenway Park will be dripping with all kinds of emotion. It’s a tough ticket, and for good reason: It’ll be the last time loyal Red Sox fans will ever see David Ortiz in a regular-season game. There won’t be a dry eye in the joint.
But when today’s game is over, Ortiz will not be riding into the sunset. He’ll be riding into the trainer’s room to get taped up and stretched out in time for Game 1 of the Division Series.
What this does is add an extra level of excitement to this year’s postseason, in that we may not know for sure if the Ortiz at-bat we’re watching is the last one we’ll see. If, say, Ortiz comes to bat in the seventh inning of the deciding Game 5 of the Division Series, the Red Sox trailing 3-1, we won’t really know if this is it.
Ortiz has already played on three World Series championship teams. Surely he’d like to close out his brilliant career with one more, and sportswriters everywhere will write themselves into a frenzy if said championship is delivered via a walkoff home run by Big Papi.
That’s not just a best-case scenario, it’s a crazy, get-your-head-examined scenario. But while it was never going to happen to Ted Williams in 1960 or Carl Yastrzemski in 1983, it’s possible David Ortiz will have that chance.
We have no idea where or when David Ortiz will step up to the plate for the last time. It might be by the end of the next week. It might not be until the beginning of November. It might be at Fenway Park, but it might be at Progressive Field . . . Dodger Stadium . . . Citi Field.
Good heavens, it might even be at Wrigley Field. There’d be no DH, which means you might have this: “Pinch-hitting for the Red Sox in the ninth inning, No. 34, David Ortiz!”
Buckle up.