Papi

by David Ortiz

  The Red Sox had a new manager for the 2003 season, and his name was Grady Little. He was pulling for me to make it, and I could sense his support. I started off strong in the spring, and when I started to tail off a bit, he sat me down for a private talk.

  “What’s going on with you?” he asked. “Are you tired or something? You don’t look the same.”

  It was a great observation on his part. I was tired, and I explained the reason to him in one word.

  Manny.

  I told myself that I wanted to be a great player, and I saw that Manny was already there. I wanted to do what he was doing. I knew that he wasn’t really the person he wanted people to think he was. Manny wanted people to think that he was a lazy bastard, because he didn’t want anyone to know just how hard he was working. He liked that people described him as kind of an airhead who was great in baseball just because he was a natural at hitting.

  One day he said to me, “Come and do my workout with me.”

  You won’t believe the schedule he put me through. At the end of each day, I was pretty much dead. It was nuts. He had a trainer who would get us started around 6:30 or 7:00 each morning. Then we’d play the game. Let’s say we’d leave the park around 4:00. We’d go home for an hour or 90 minutes and then meet up with the trainer for another two-hour workout.

  Man, Manny wore me out. I did that workout for about two and a half weeks and actually started to get used to it. But when I told Grady about it, he asked me to stop. He said he wanted me on his team and he didn’t want to give anyone any excuses for not having me in the mix. I certainly understood what he meant. It had been a .137 spring batting average for Minnesota, four years earlier, that convinced them I wasn’t ready to be a big leaguer.

  But what I was learning from Manny, Pedro, Grady, and eventually Theo Epstein was clear: I was a long way from Minnesota. It was different in spring training, and when I got back to Boston, the intensity of the fans and the ballpark was unlike anything I’d ever experienced from a home crowd. The fans knew all of the players, whether they saw the players at the park or at the grocery store. They were desperate for a championship, and they seemed to be on top of every pitch, every swing, every movement on the field.

  I was on a new team, in a new city, and now, for the first time in my career, it was time to see if I could reach in the majors what had come so easily in the minors: greatness.

  4

  Work, Wait, Play

  The best right-handed hitter I’ve ever seen in my life is Manny Ramírez. I could sit here all day and give you dozens of reasons why, but let’s start with the obvious one: in the spring and summer of 2003, he helped me change the way I thought about and played baseball.

  I’ve had many batting coaches in my career, but Manny was the best one I ever had. If you were in a mini-slump, he always understood what the problem was. I’d always known that he was a hitting genius, long before I got to the Red Sox. He was one of the rare power hitters who could do everything. He could hurt you with a line drive over the second baseman’s head, an opposite-field home run, or a shot to the power alleys. He put up some absolutely crazy numbers before we became teammates, and after spending some up-close time with him, I could see why.

  One year, playing in Cleveland, he drove in 165 runs in 147 games. That’s ridiculous. That same season he had 44 home runs and a .333 batting average. All of that and he only finished third in the Most Valuable Player Award voting. The year before I got to the Red Sox, Manny won the batting title with a .349 average, led the league with a .450 on-base percentage, and had a slugging percentage of .647. Again, ridiculous. And even worse than before, he finished ninth in the MVP voting.

  What I quickly learned about Manny was that he wasn’t going to win many media popularity contests. He loved the way they talked about him, as if he were some airhead who just happened to know how to handle a bat. In fact, he was a thinker in the games, as well as in training sessions and batting practice. He would train for where he knew pitchers liked to go. He almost never pulled the ball in practice because he knew he was unlikely to get that pitch in the games. If he did get it, he already knew what to do with it. The truth is, I would say that 70 percent of today’s pitchers don’t feel comfortable pitching inside. When pitchers go in now, it’s only because they think that you have zero chance of hitting that inside pitch. That’s the only intentional reason. The other reason is they make a mistake: they try to go away and the ball comes back in. Watch baseball. Watch the game. Sit down and watch the game and take notes and see how many times you see pitchers pitching inside. They just don’t. And with a guy like Manny? They didn’t even think about it.

  I learned to see the game a different way, just from watching and listening to Manny. He was really good at slowing a pitcher down and knowing what the guy wanted to do. When he was really locked in, he was seeing it in slow motion. Really, it didn’t matter what they threw him, or if a righty or lefty was on the mound. He was crushing everybody. I had heard of hitters getting to that level, but I had never experienced it. It was going to be a little while before I got the chance.

  I had a lot of time to study his on-field techniques early in 2003 because I wasn’t playing. The Red Sox had many players who profiled as first basemen, third basemen, or designated hitters, and I was one of them. Without any promise of playing time. The third basemen were Shea Hillenbrand, who had made the All-Star team the year before, and Bill Mueller, who was hitting over .380 in the first two months of the season. Hillenbrand could also play first, which made room for Mueller but created a jam in the first/DH lane that included me, Kevin Millar, and Jeremy Giambi. It was a bit of a mess. I couldn’t figure out what my role was in April and May. I was on pace for just over 300 at-bats, a part-time schedule. It was the only link between my time with the Red Sox and my time with the Twins.

  My situation aside, I loved the excitement of Boston. Fenway Park was either full or close to it every time we played, and there was always a Sox fan who knew your name when you were on the road. The fans were smart and intense. None of them were old enough to recall when the team last won the World Series, in 1918, and they hungered for a season to finally end with a win and a parade. Winning the Series was the mission of the city, the whole region really, and there wasn’t a week that went by without a reference to it.

  There were no places to hide out if you were a big leaguer in New England. Everyone in the region seemed to love baseball and have a strong opinion about it. Every aspect of baseball was discussed in Boston, from the money spent by the owners to the moves of the general manager to the decisions the manager made during the games. No one was above criticism. That was especially true if there was a thought that any well-paid players weren’t giving everything they had on the field. There was something about the desperation of the people in Boston that made me want to perform for them. I had never seen fans feeling such an urgent need to win.

  The problem at that time was that I saw them more than they saw me. And when they did see me, I wasn’t circling the bases. On May 26, Memorial Day, my season home run total stood at two. Grady Little had told me in March to stop doing Manny’s workout because I wasn’t used to it and it was making me look slower in the games. But now that I wasn’t playing, I figured I should at least try to keep up with Manny. And whenever I would get frustrated or didn’t feel like putting the work in, Manny and Pedro would be in my ear. “Keep working,” they’d say. “You’re going to get a chance soon.”

  I admired Manny and Pedro, but it was hard to watch what was happening. In those first two months, there was no rhythm to my schedule. Sometimes I would start back-to-back games. Sometimes I would pinch-hit. There were days I would play first and days I’d be the DH. Unfortunately, there were too many times when the days would pass—a couple of times it was four days—without me leaving the bench. I liked the city, I liked my manager, and I liked my teammates. I hated watching.

  One day in late May, I called my agent and left him a blunt m
essage: “If you’re not here, in Boston, by tomorrow, you’re fired!” To his credit, he arrived for breakfast the next day. I had already told Grady that I was better than the players who were on the field in front of me. He knew how angry I was. So I wanted my agent to set up a meeting with Theo Epstein. I told Theo how I was feeling and that something needed to happen, and maybe that meant trading or releasing me.

  There was nothing calm about my demeanor. I knew that I could play, that I could really hit, and I wanted my chance. I knew I was ready. I wasn’t always in the best shape in Minnesota, and now I was. I didn’t have the mental approach in Minnesota that I was gaining in Boston, and I wanted to put that to work on the field. Things were starting to click for me, in the way I thought about and approached the game. I was 27 and should have been ready for my prime. If I could hit 20 home runs in Minnesota without even getting 500 at-bats, I felt that I should be capable of more in Boston playing all the time.

  I didn’t back down from Theo. I wanted to play. I wanted to know what he was going to do about it. Theo was my age, in his first full season as general manager. He was young and inexperienced, but he handled the confrontation like a veteran. He told me that he believed in my ability, that he always had as far back as the late 1990s, when he was working in San Diego and I was in the minors. He told me he needed some time to make some moves and then I would get my opportunity.

  He was a man of his word. On May 29, Hillenbrand was traded to Arizona. Hillenbrand had actually been playing well between first and third, and he had driven in the most runs on our team. But Hillenbrand’s less-patient approach didn’t fit into what we were building as far as our identity as a team, and although a lot of people tried to label it “new school” baseball, it really was what Manny had been doing all along. Slow pitchers down. Be patient and see as many pitches as possible. Find a way to smash your pitch or, at worst, get on base. Our whole team was good at that—so good that it became the best offense I’d ever seen.

  When Hillenbrand was traded, for pitcher Byun-Hyun Kim, Mueller became the everyday third baseman. Millar got the bulk of the at-bats at first. And for the first time in my career, I felt that, from top to bottom, a team was saying to me, “The job is yours. Go get it, big boy.” I pinch-hit occasionally and I played some first, but I was officially the full-time designated hitter of the Red Sox. I took a lot of pride in preparing for the job.

  Now the only time I sat down was when the team was in the field. I spent a lot of time analyzing pitchers, and I never had to do it by myself. Pedro was our best pitcher, and one of the smartest people in baseball. I used to tell people that he had a mind from NASA. That’s the best way to describe him. He’s such a talented, intelligent person. When he wasn’t pitching, he’d often come up to me and say, “Start looking for the slider or the cutter. He’s going to throw it to you your next at-bat.” I’d ask him how he knew that and he’d say, “Because of what he did to you your last at-bat.”

  So I’d go up for my next at-bat, wait on the pitch that Pedro told me to wait on, and hit a home run. The crowd would go crazy, and I’d run the bases, all the while thinking, How in the hell does Pedro know this stuff?

  I was so grateful to be able to learn valuable lessons about the game from Pedro and Manny, in person. Not only did God give Pedro a gift to play baseball, He also gave him a lot of guts. I was able to get a good idea of what Boston fans look for by watching Pedro. He was a great pitcher, and he played like he was trying to prove something. But who knows who Pedro would have been if the Dodgers had not traded him? I tell him that the Dodgers did him a favor when they gave up on a Hall of Fame pitcher. They provided him with an extra edge, and maybe that would never have happened if he had stayed in L.A.

  Between getting tips from Pedro and Manny and getting actual playing time every day, the game had started to slow down for me. I was so obsessed with learning, figuring out the tendencies, knowing what a pitcher wanted to do against me. It seriously got to the point where I would be dreaming about hitting. It was all I thought about. That was dangerous, but in a good way. My confidence was rising to levels I had only heard people describe but didn’t think I’d ever experience. Every mistake that was thrown to me, I felt, was going to be a home run. It was as if everyone else was trying to move fast but I was seeing the ball in slow motion. You ever see that special effect in the movies? Everything slows down and you can do whatever you want. That’s exactly how it started to be. I would be like, Yeah, throw me that changeup. Here comes the changeup. POW. Or, Oh, you throw ninety-eight? Throw me that fastball. Here comes the fastball. POW. It was like that.

  Besides the preparation and playing time, there were many other reasons I found that groove. Our lineup was impossible to face at times. One through nine, we had guys who made pitching staffs uncomfortable: Johnny Damon, Todd Walker, Nomar Garciaparra, Manny, me, Trot Nixon, Millar, Jason Varitek, and Bill Mueller. Halfway through the year, reporters began to notice that we were slugging so well that we were exceeding the pace of one of the most famous teams in history, the 1927 New York Yankees. That team had an intimidating nickname, Murderers’ Row, and featured Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth in the lineup. They finished with a .489 team slugging percentage; ours was .491.

  And that brings me back to Manny. If he was anywhere close to me in the lineup, the job got that much easier. If Manny was hitting behind you, the pitcher would give you something to hit because he didn’t want to put you on base and then have to deal with Manny. If Manny was hitting in front of you, he got on base so much that there were always opportunities to drive in runs. That’s what happened for me as the spring turned into summer.

  On the first day of summer, June 21, my home run total for the season still wasn’t great. I had only three, and my slugging percentage was .480. Two months later, I was at 18 home runs with a .545 slugging percentage. I was just getting warmed up. I finished the season with 31 home runs, the highest number of my career. I finished fifth in the MVP voting, one slot ahead of Manny.

  It was more than the individual success, though. We had a good team, and we believed we could win the World Series. Our fans also believed in us. It was all so new, both to them and to many of us. We were unlike any other Red Sox team in recent memory. We were relatable and playful, aware of the long rivalry with the Yankees but not overwhelmed by it. During the regular season, in fact, I had some of my best games against the Yankees. We weren’t afraid of them.

  Sometimes I thought back to my time in Minnesota and wondered what could have been if I’d stayed there. As I started to get hot with the Red Sox, one of the reporters from the Twin Cities came to Boston for a story. I remember he asked, “Why are you having success here and you didn’t have it in Minnesota?” I don’t know if I answered this way, but I wanted to say, “Did you just look at the games or did you actually watch them?”

  If you look at my last year in Minnesota, I was going in this direction. I was hurt and I didn’t play all the time, yet I had 20 home runs in fewer than 500 at-bats. Give me a chance to play and I’m going to produce.

  Boston was the right combination of everything. Fenway is the smallest park in the majors, but I looked up at the end of June and we had already drawn 1.3 million fans. They couldn’t get enough of us. Grady wasn’t a micromanager from the dugout. He showed confidence in his players and wasn’t afraid to walk around the clubhouse telling jokes. Our pitching was good, led by Pedro and his league-leading earned run average, but if you can believe it, our offense was better. Besides the record slugging percentage, we averaged about six runs per game. Even teams with superstar pitching staffs knew it was going to be hard to silence us over the course of a series. It was a fun group. We didn’t win the American League East, but we got a playoff spot via the wild card.

  We began the playoffs with a five-game series against the Oakland A’s. They were a good team, and one day their bench coach, Terry Francona, would be one of us. But that wasn’t the focus going into October. We felt that we match
ed up well against any team, and we thought we were going to see the Yankees in the next round. I was all right with all of it.

  I was 27 years old, playing every day, and in my prime. I had found my game in Boston. And finally, for the first time since I had left the DR, I felt like I had found a home.

  5

  Turning Point

  I couldn’t do anything, which isn’t like me. Anyone who has ever been around me understands how much appreciation I have for well-timed jokes, continuous laughter, good music, and being social with smiling friends. I can’t think of a better place than New York City to do all those things, and more, at all hours of the day. But there I was the night of October 15, 2003, in the middle of Manhattan, with an appetite for . . . nothing.

  I couldn’t relax.

  I couldn’t go to one of my favorite Dominican restaurants, Café Rubio in Queens, and eat rice and beans, chased with some red wine.

  No music, no matter how riveting and rhythmic the bass line, was right for the moment.

  I turned to TV and wasn’t comforted by familiar shows and old movies.

  There wasn’t anywhere in all of New York City I wanted to go. There are more Dominicans in the city, close to 675,000, than there are people in Boston, and the community has always been good to me. Most of my friends there are Yankees fans, and yet I’d often see them in the crowd, with their Yankees hats on, cheering for me after a home run. I always had a good time with them afterward, teasing them about being confused and their ability to root for both the Red Sox and Yankees, which is supposed to be impossible.

  It was the night before Game 7 of the American League Championship Series at Yankee Stadium, and I was in my Westin Times Square hotel room, with the possibilities of the next day spinning in my head.