Real-life struggles
While coping with Ortiz situation, Sox hitting stride on field
BALTIMORE — Eduardo Nunez was at a reggaeton concert in Boston on Sunday night, enjoying a rare and carefree respite from the daily grind of the baseball season, when, just after 9 p.m., his phone started buzzing with text messages and voice mails. By the time he could find somewhere quiet to gather himself, there were more than a hundred of them. In some ways, his life hasn’t been the same since.
On Friday night, Nunez, a veteran infielder and native of the Dominican Republic, and his Boston Red Sox teammates were at Camden Yards for the start of a six-game trip to Baltimore and Minneapolis — the first time they had been away from Boston since the shocking news that former Red Sox slugger and eternal Boston icon David Ortiz had been shot and wounded Sunday night in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo.
Less than a week later, Ortiz, 43, remains in stable condition in the intensive care unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston — having been transported out of Santo Domingo by an air ambulance the day after the shooting — and Nunez, who turns 32 on Saturday, remains the only Red Sox player known to have spoken to Ortiz since the incident.
The conversation happened Tuesday, by which point Ortiz had already twice undergone surgery to repair damage to his liver and intestines. Fern Cuza, the agent who represents both, called Nunez, told him to wait a moment, and suddenly Ortiz was on the phone.
“How you doing, homeboy?” Ortiz said in Spanish, Nunez recalled Friday. “Where you at right now?” When Nunez told him he was at Fenway Park getting ready for a game, Ortiz said, “You got to come and see me” — and started to laugh.
Maybe Ortiz — who retired in 2016 after 20 big league seasons and three World Series titles, and now works as a special assistant for the team — was trying to put Nunez at ease by trying to sound better than he actually felt, knowing the conversation would be relayed to the rest of the team. But if that was the case, it worked.
“It was good to hear. He didn’t even sound like he was hurt,” Nunez said. “You couldn’t even tell. Whenever I hear his voice, I feel really good.”
By Friday, from a distance of almost a week and of some 400 miles of Atlantic coastline, the Red Sox were able to feel at least somewhat removed from the immediate trauma of the Ortiz news. Aside from a team meeting on Monday at Fenway Park, by which point Ortiz was still in Santo Domingo, the Red Sox have made a point of trying to put that situation out of their minds when they arrive to work each day.
“It’s tough for everyone here. We love him so much,” Nunez said. “Something like that is bigger than baseball. It’s life. But at the end of the day we have a job to do.”
It’s not as if the Red Sox don’t already have enough to worry about. At 37-34 entering Saturday night’s game against the Orioles, they have yet to find the form that carried them to 108 wins and the World Series title in 2018.
Despite all that, and a 8-6 record in June entering Saturday night, the Red Sox, solidly in third place in the American League East, have managed to shave three games off their deficit in the past 12 days.