Time to keep a Papi watch
All along, David Ortiz insisted it was a matter of time.
Everyone just assumed he meant Father Time.
Two months ago — June 10, to be precise — Ortiz was batting .219 with six homers in 196 at-bats and looked so lost the Red Sox benched him for a game in Baltimore against a pitcher, lefty Wei-Yin Chen, he usually torments. Even principal owner John Henry, one of Ortiz’ most ardent supporters and certainly his biggest benefactor, offered this assessment of the 39- year- old franchise icon: “He’s not going to hit 50 home runs, but is he going to hit 30? It doesn’t look like it this year.”
Yet here is Ortiz, leading the Sox with 23 homers, on pace for 33 and 11 away from becoming the 27th player ever to hit 500 in his career, a milestone that suddenly appears within his reach before the end of the season.
We’d call it a comeback except, in hindsight, it’s clear Ortiz never really went away.
“I wasn’t too worried about it because it was still early in the season,” said Ortiz, sitting at his locker before a game last weekend in Detroit. “In my case, every year, I get to a point where I match myself to what people are kind of used to seeing. I don’t start even paying attention to my numbers until at least the All-Star break.”
Lately, Ortiz hasn’t had to check his stats to know exactly how many times he has gone deep. The anticipation builds with each home run, like minutes passing in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
No. 487: A solo shot halfway up the bleachers at Yankee Stadium last Wednesday night . . . No. 488: A 445-footer in Detroit last Friday night . . . No. 489: Another blast at Comerica Park last Saturday night.
“Back in my country, people are just counting every day,” said Ortiz, bidding to join Sammy Sosa, Manny Ramirez and Albert Pujols as natives of the Dominican Republic in the 500 Club. “Every time I hit a home run, I’m on the front page of the newspapers there. Just counting, counting, counting. It’s something that, it’s kind of special.”
The weight of the achievement isn’t lost on Ortiz, not that he thought much about it before last winter. Ortiz spent six seasons merely trying to establish himself as an everyday player in Minnesota. And despite hitting 20 homers in 412 at-bats for the Twins in 2002, it wasn’t until he signed with the Red Sox that he felt like he was getting a real opportunity.
So, although Ortiz went deep 31, 41, 47, 54 (a singleseason franchise record) and 35 times in his first five years with the Sox, he never considered he might someday take his place among the most prolific sluggers of alltime, even as he reached 300 homers a few days before the All-Star break in 2009 and 400 on the Fourth of July in 2012.
“Not really, because I pretty much have been able to pull those numbers together the past 13 years, basically,” Ortiz said. “To be honest with you, I didn’t really start thinking about 500 until the end of last year and in the offseason. That’s pretty much when everybody talked to me about, ‘Hey, you’re 34 homers away from 500 home runs.’ That’s when I sat back and was like, ‘Wow.’ It’s something that, to me, is very special.”
Even if 11 of the 500 Club’s 26 members have joined since 1999 and several — Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Alex Rodriguez and Ramirez — are associated with the steroid era?
“This game has more than 100 years of history, and as far as I know, only 20-something guys have been able to get to that number. It’s not an easy thing to do,” said Ortiz, who sparked PED suspicions in 2009 when his name turned up on the leaked list of players who failed a confidential drugtesting survey six years earlier. “You look at all the Hall of Fame hitters, not all of them got to 500 home runs. And the ones that have got there, you can see they’re special players.”
Likewise, the list of those who came agonizingly close includes some of the greatest hitters ever. Lou Gehrig finished with 493 homers, his career cut short by the disease that killed him; Stan Musial and Willie Stargell each hit 475; Dave Winfield 465.
Two months ago, with Ortiz stuck on 472, doubters suggested his bat had become too slow to catch up to blazing fastballs. Ortiz knew better. The problem, he says, was poor timing with his front foot, and it was correctable with time and repetition.
As hitting coach Chili Davis said: “He’s David Ortiz. I expected him to hit.”
Eight of Ortiz’ last 17 homers have traveled at least 430 feet, according to ESPN Home Run Tracker, prompting him to joke, “That just means I’m swinging out of my (butt).”
But one thing Ortiz won’t do: Intentionally try to hit homers just to accelerate the march to 500.
“I’m not putting pressure on myself to get there,” he said. “I keep on playing the game normal. I’ve seen guys that, as they get closer, every swing is looking for the fence. We have plenty of games left. But if it doesn’t happen this year, it happens next year.”
Spoken like someone who knows it’s only a matter of time.