Herald writers: Thanks for the memories, Papi

The Herald’s chief baseball writers share their lasting memories of David Ortiz as the Red Sox slugger closes in on his final game: • STEVE BUCKLEY The statue of Bob Feller outside Cleveland’s Progressive Field shows the Indians legend hurling a fastball.

The statue of David Ortiz outside Fenway Park — when it happens, and it will happen — will show the Red Sox legend hurling an expletive.

My lasting memory of Big Papi’s years with the Sox will not be a swing of the bat, but a slip of the tongue. (Intentional or otherwise.) Yes, his many game-winning hits helped bring World Series championships to the Hub, but Ortiz cemented his place as a Boston guy on that sunny Saturday afternoon at Fenway in April 2013, just five days after the marathon bombings. At a time when we needed someone to tell the world how we were feeling, Ortiz grabbed a microphone and said it: “This is our (expletive) city. And nobody’s gonna dictate our freedom.”

I’m not a big fan of erecting statues in honor of our sports heroes. But it’s a given that Ortiz is headed for a Bronze Age outside Fenway Park, and when it is unveiled, I hope we see Big Papi holding a microphone, not a bat. Spare me the hand wringing about how Ortiz used a hush-hush word and what kind of message it sends to kids. Kids hear worse at home, and, anyway, they are going to grow up to appreciate why Ortiz used that word on that day, and what it meant, what it will always mean.

Talk about a clutch performance. • MICHAEL SILVERMAN Goosebumps are not an everyday occurrence for a sportswriter. That’s a good thing for a couple of reasons. In a long baseball season, so many games are uneventful; the special ones stand. As fans, we crave those moments of utter joy and dread the agonizing defeats, but when it’s your job to write about such moments, you can’t succumb to them or else you’ll write saccharine drivel or disposable tripe that you’ll regret the instant you hit “send.”

That’s why a couple degrees of detachment and practicality, as well as a pressing deadline, are sometimes the sportswriter’s best friend. They force focus and clear-eyed reflection that hopefully captures the moment without capitulating to it. That said, a writer must take note when something special happens. At the old Yankee Stadium, I always fell under the spell and magic of sports whenever the Yankees did something amazing, because when the stadium erupted in a full-throated wall of sound, the press box swayed. Literally.

Fenway Park never got that way. Except in the early morning hours of Oct. 18, 2004, Game 4 of the ALCS, when David Ortiz hit the 12th-inning, two-run home run that began the most improbable, thrilling comeback I’ve ever seen.

Fenway Park shook and shimmied that night. Goosebumps. • EVAN DRELLICH Do you know about the New Yorkers who needed David Ortiz? I’ll tell you.

I did not grow up in Boston. I’m a New York City kid. I didn’t really follow baseball until 1998, when I was sucked in by the steroid-fueled home run race. My father is from Queens, so we liked the Mets, but I enjoyed the Yankees, too. My fandom was a blank canvas.

Quickly, once school started that year, I realized how obnoxious all my Yankees fans friends were, how they belittled the Mets. So I became a Mets fan, and a rabid one.

By default, I hated the Yankees.

Ortiz and the Red Sox, then, for this Mets fan and many others, proved a means to an end: watching the Yankees lose.

Just because I wasn’t a Sox or Yankees fan didn’t mean a lack of investment in the rivalry.

There weren’t many Mets fans in my grade, so I stood alone most of the time. The late ’90s Yankees grabbed a generation.

I still remember watching Game 5 of the 2004 ALCS, and having the feeling that Ortiz would indeed get another walkoff hit. He had to if I was to be happy at school the following day.

The inner fan fades when you become a baseball writer. I don’t care what today’s Yankees do — as long as it’s interesting enough to write about.

But my younger self is thankful for Ortiz, because he finally shut up all my friends — and gave me reason to yell a lot from the bleachers during Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS. • JASON MASTRODONATO It’s not one of his big hits that I’ll remember most. David Ortiz had too many of those. Eventually, you just came to expect them from him. It’s the person he tried to be when he wasn’t at the plate. Many ballplayers put on an act, especially in the presence of the media, and usually it’s very apparent. Some want to look cool, unaffected by failure and overly confident. Others want to look like good company men, just saying what they’re supposed to say. Some avoid reporters. A few words is all they’ll share. They don’t want to be known by the media, and in turn, they aren’t going to be known by the fans.

Those guys should spend more time observing David Ortiz.

When I first started covering the Sox in 2011, I wasn’t sure if it was an act. But it didn’t take long to realize that nobody could act like Ortiz. He goes out of his way to be himself. And his defining characteristic is that he loves people. Why else would he have a converter that allows him to charge six cell phones at once? He wants to talk to everybody, all the time. He hates losing. He’ll tell you when he gets beat — and why he got beat. He loves winning. And he’ll tell you what he is thinking and how he’s feeling. Ortiz is as honest as he can be. He has been an open book who made time for anybody. Sometimes, that has gotten him into trouble. But at least he’ll retire knowing he let the outside world get to know him. The real him.