BOSTON – Yesterday afternoon, Gabe Kapler acknowledged a widely assumed notion about Boston’s hottest hitter: David Ortiz likes to party.
So what is partying with Ortiz really like?
“He is the king of the microphone,” Kapler said with an easy smile. “He likes to command attention – and he does.”
No doubt about it. If Fenway Park is New England’s largest frat party, then Ortiz is part MC, part MVP.
Ortiz will try to repeat his greatest hits as the World Series gets underway tonight against St. Louis. He has already clouted Anaheim into winter and destroyed the Yankees with walk-off hits in Games 4 and 5.
“For two years now, he’s been in clutch form,” Cards manager Tony La Russa said. “You take your hat off because he’s such a tough out and it looks like guys rally around him.”
Or as Boston’s Doug Mientkiewicz put it, “You know teams aren’t going to let David beat them – and he continues to beat them.”
Ortiz is hitting .429 with four homers and 15 RBIs in 10 postseason games.
His two-run bomb into the Yankee bullpen in the 12th inning of Game 4 kept faith alive in New England, and his walk-off single in the 14th inning of Game 5 sent the series back to New York.
When the 28-year-old left-handed hitter smashed a two-run homer off Kevin Brown in the first inning of Game 7, he cemented MVP honors in the ALCS.
“He helped carry us through that series,” Keith Foulke said. “What David did to pick us up in that last series, you can’t put into words. He put us over the top in several of those games, and that can never be overlooked or forgotten.”
What is the man underneath the uniform like? Rattling off compliments as fast as Ortiz can crank batting-practice homers, Kapler said Ortiz is endearing, caring, warm, funny and playful.
“He’s a big, boisterous guy with a great sense of humor,” Kapler said. “He has a tiny, tiny, little language barrier that becomes hilarious at the right moments.
“He’s a good dude.”
In other words, Ortiz is the Dominican Mo Vaughn – at least before Vaughn’s “Fat Elvis” years in Anaheim and New York.
If Ortiz has a hole in his off-field swing, it’s his honesty. He said the Angels were toast without Jose Guillen and claimed the Yankees were “very worried” about the Sox in September.
He has toned down the rhetoric in the last month as he has simultaneously ratcheted up his level of play.
“[In] his eyes, there’s no intimidation – except when he’s on the field,” Kapler said.
