by David Ortiz
It was a grand slam to tie the score at 5, and Fenway erupted. Torii and I had grown up together with the Twins, and our families had remained close through the years. I knew what he was capable of and he knew what I could do. If he had caught that ball, we would have been in trouble going to Detroit down 0–2, considering the unbelievable pitching we were facing. He understood how important that home run was to the game and the series. At 38 years old, he was still a damn good outfielder and could run as well as a player ten years younger. He went all out for it, missed it by eight inches to a foot, and I knew then that we would win the series.
Seriously.
We had an opening, and we had taken advantage of every opportunity that had come our way all season. Why would we change now? If we weren’t out of the series after those back-to-back starts by Sánchez and Scherzer, nothing was going to stop us. We won Game 2 in the ninth, 6–5. A single run was scored in Game 3, Mike Napoli’s home run off Verlander, so we now led a series in which the opponent’s starters had allowed a total of two runs in three games. Man, I loved our team. In 2011, on paper, our team wasn’t supposed to lose and we couldn’t win when it mattered. In 2013, our team wasn’t supposed to be shit on paper and we couldn’t lose. You can never take the heartbeat and personality out of this game. Never. It makes up for a lot of deficiencies.
We went back and forth with the Tigers in Games 4 and 5, and that put us one win from the pennant. It was as if the series had restarted. We were back at Fenway for Game 6, and the starting pitcher was Scherzer. Although he wasn’t as sharp as he’d been in Game 2, he was good enough to be pitching with a 2–1 lead with one out in the seventh. But when he walked our rookie third baseman, Xander Bogaerts, he was taken out of the game.
Bogaerts was on first, Jonny was on second, and Ellsbury was at the plate facing Smyly. In Game 2, Ellsbury had walked in this matchup. In Game 6, he reached on an error by one of our former teammates. José Iglesias had been part of a three-way trade in July between the Tigers, White Sox, and Red Sox. Iglesias was one of the best fielders I had ever seen, surehanded and fluid. The ball from Ellsbury was hit right at him and briefly went into his glove, but he dropped the ball. The bases were loaded for Victorino. It was perfect. Anyone who didn’t understand who we were, and what we represented, could have learned in that Victorino at-bat.
It started with Victorino’s signing, which had been questioned by many in baseball. He was supposedly a declining player, yet he had given us Gold Glove defense in right field all season. He’d also produced 15 home runs and a career-high .294 batting average. He came to the park every day eager to prove that the scouting report on him was wrong. He was tough. He was positive about our team and angry about any slight against it. That was the snapshot of all of us.
All season he had made pitchers pay for mistakes. In this at-bat, he was facing José Veras, who had a 95-mile-per-hour fastball with good movement. But the first pitch Veras threw was a curveball for a strike. His second pitch was a curveball that Victorino fouled off. Remember, this is a man who can throw the heat. If he had thrown that to Victorino, he probably would have gotten him out. Instead, he threw another breaking ball and Victorino pulled it to the Monster and out of the park. Grand slam, again. He rounded the bases yelling, pounding his chest. We all understood what he was thinking. It was yet another night when someone on our team got payback on somebody who had said they were no good.
We were going to the World Series.
The spring had begun so terribly, with so much sadness in the city. Lives had been lost, and survivors had been changed forever. I had wanted to do my part, and have the team do its part, by bringing smiles to as many faces as possible.
There was no doubt that we were going to beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the Series, and not just because I wanted it to happen. I had a few ideas running through my mind. One was that I never gave them a shot to beat us because I didn’t think they were strong offensively. This is how I looked at it a couple of days before Game 1: whoever hit the best was going to win it because our pitching was about the same.
I also had a maturity and intensity that was more pronounced than it had been six years earlier, the last time I was in the Series. Younger players don’t always understand the postseason, and how it’s no time to be messing around. I took the playoffs more seriously than anything because I felt it was my time to do something special and get locked in. We owed it to the people of Boston, who had seen such tragedy on their streets that year.
I had looked at some playoff predictions and noticed that the Cardinals were getting a lot of attention for their starting pitching, specifically Adam Wainwright and Michael Wacha. I’d studied their entire staff, starters and relievers alike, and I thought I had a good handle on what they did well. For example, they planned to start Wainwright against us in Game 1, although I believed Wacha’s style was much more effective against an American League team. I knew we’d be all right against Wainwright. We put three runs on him in the first inning of Game 1, and two in the second. We also had Jon Lester pitching, so it was an easy night for us. We won 8–1.
Game 2, also at Fenway, was interesting. It was the first time we had faced the rookie Wacha, and I knew what my guys were going through during the game. He was mowing us down, but we were quickly getting a feel for what he liked to do. I knew if it turned into a long Series and we saw Wacha again, he would not have the success he had in Game 2. In fact, I talked about that during Game 2.
In my first at-bat against him, I grounded out. I walked my second time up. Before my third at-bat, I told one of our pitchers, Jake Peavy, that I was comfortable with my scouting report: Wacha had a good fastball and he liked it, but he really loved his changeup. He’d throw it at any time. It was his best pitch. I told Peavy, “He’s going to keep leaving that thing up, and I’m gonna hit it out. Opposite field.”
That’s what happened in the sixth, and it gave us a 2–1 lead. When I got back to the dugout, Peavy kept looking at me and shaking his head. “What the hell?” he said. “You called it and did it, like you’ve done it before.”
It wasn’t a mystery. Just homework. It was why I spent so much time, in and out of season, thinking and dreaming about the habits of pitchers. That was the payoff. Peavy must have talked to me for a week about calling that home run.
The Cardinals came back to win Game 2, and they went back to St. Louis to win Game 3 as well. In the middle of Game 4, with the score tied at 1, I decided to say something to the team in the dugout. We were down 2–1 in the Series, and we were playing like zombies. Quiet, no emotion, a little stiff.
I gathered my boys around and wanted to drop some knowledge.
“You think you’re going to come to the World Series every year?” I said. “It’s not gonna happen. You don’t come to this every year. So do you know what you do when you come to this? You give everything you have, as if it’s your last ride. You don’t let the opposition fuck you up just because you’re scared and you’re panicking.”
I told them that we were better than the Cardinals, and better than we’d played so far. Then I asked a question that I already knew the answer to: “Are you scared? Who’s scared here?” Nobody raised a hand. After that, it was time for the conclusion: “Then let’s fucking go.”
In the sixth inning, we woke up and never looked back for the rest of the Series. Pedroia singled, and I followed him with a walk. That set the stage for Jonny, who I was honored to call a teammate. He was always ready to put in work, no matter what the situation. He was a late addition to the lineup, and he made John Farrell look smart. Jonny’s three-run homer gave us the lead and the eventual win. The Series was tied at 2, and we had a couple of things going in our favor.
One was that I was locked in and the Cardinals continued to pitch to me. And I knew the reason. Their manager, Mike Matheny, was a former catcher. And catchers, in their minds, think they can get a motherfucker out. Anytime. They don’t understand that when a motherfucker is hot, he’s hot
. Then the whole team gets hot. That’s how it works, and that’s eventually what happened to us in Game 6.
But before we got there, we had the other factor that worked to our advantage. Lester. He had been the best pitcher of the postseason, and that didn’t change in Game 5. He was on fire again, allowing one run and four hits in a 3–1 win. We’d gone to St. Louis down 2–1, and after winning two out of three, we were in position to clinch the World Series in front of fans who’d been through hell in 2013. They deserved it. The pitcher standing between us and clinching was the rookie Michael Wacha.
We were ready for him. All of us. The Cardinals walked me four times in the game, but it was too late to be cautious. Our team was relaxed, so much so that before the game we sat around being entertained by the shirtless, jock-strap-wearing, high-socks-sporting Jack Hammer. I knew then that we were going to win the Series that night. I had hit .688 in the Series and would be named Most Valuable Player. Everyone commented on how I would come through, again, in the clutch.
My wife saw it differently. She told me something that I would never forget. She said, “As clutch as you were on the field, you did that and more to win me back and put our family back together.” Let me tell you, it was a miracle. I had been separated from my wife for a year, and I was an autograph away from being divorced. And it didn’t happen. That’s not how those stories usually end.
The final act of our season was just as poetic. We paraded through the city, waving to millions of Red Sox fans who had fallen in love with our team again after some hard times. When we got to Boylston Street, near the Marathon finish line, we stopped and sang “God Bless America.” I’d met some of the survivors throughout the summer and seen up close how their lives had been altered forever. And that was just what I could see. No one could be the same after experiencing that in their city. We’d all been changed somehow.
Winning the World Series helped a lot of people get closer to the normal they once knew. I was proud of that, and even more proud of the way we’d been able to celebrate as a region. With millions of people coming together in downtown Boston, there were just a few arrests and no disturbing incidents. Despite what happened in April, we had defended and retained our freedom.
I’m telling you, as I look back on the year and realize how everything ended up, all I can say is that God is great. God is great because we went from a storm to a day like the parade. It went from the worst it could be to the best it could be. A recovery takes a while, and our city did it in the same year as the tragedy.
A lot of things went through my head at the finish line, but I kept coming back to the miraculous nature of it all. I couldn’t believe how far we’d come.
18
Ups, Downs, Silver Linings
John Henry may have done it for a variety of reasons. Maybe it was because he’d watched me hit .688 in the World Series and take home the Series MVP award. It could have been connected to the plaque he gave me years earlier, a plaque that remains in my house to this day: most clutch player in team history.
I didn’t know the specific reason the Red Sox owner personally decided to close the deal on my contract extension, but I was relieved that he did.
“We’re going to give you a contract that allows you to play as long as you want to,” he told me in the spring of 2014. “We want you to end your career with the Red Sox.”
It wasn’t the money itself that provided the relief. It was the owner saying he cared and then doing something to show it. It was the fact that I didn’t have to talk about it anymore. The media portrayals had some fans believing that I liked the topic, or that I was simply greedy. That wasn’t the case. I was thankful that Mr. Henry removed a story line that should not have been there in the first place.
I never understood why I had to fight Red Sox general managers so hard to get what I deserved. As much credit as Theo Epstein got for signing me back in 2003, I don’t think he ever fully appreciated who I was. He would make me sweat out my deals and then turn around and give out some of the worst long-term contracts in baseball. The numbers were always going up: $39 million for Julio Lugo . . . $40 million for Edgar Rentería . . . $70 million for J. D. Drew . . . over $100 million to bid on and sign Daisuke Matsuzaka . . . over $140 million to sign Carl Crawford. When Theo left after the 2011 season and Ben Cherington took over, one of the first things Ben did was take me to the brink of arbitration. Think about that for a second. I was the guy in the middle of the lineup hitting 30 home runs and getting 100 runs batted in, year after year after year. Why would you ever have contract issues with that guy? I’m your “franchise player.” I am not asking you to give me something that I haven’t earned. For example, in 2011 I’d hit 29 home runs and 40 doubles, and yet I was steps away from arbitration. In the final hour, literally, we agreed on a one-year deal.
I thought it was bullshit, all of it: the fact that I was putting dollars in pockets, yet had to beg for my cut; the fact that money flowed freely to players who hadn’t played a day in Boston; the fact that my contract was never resolved smoothly and privately, so I could put my focus elsewhere.
That’s why I thought Mr. Henry’s move was so wise. It allowed me to put my mind fully on training and preparing for 2014. I knew I didn’t have many seasons left in my career, and I wanted to do everything possible to win another championship. But while I may have had Mr. Henry’s ear on financial matters, I couldn’t seem to capture Cherington’s when it came to personnel.
I tried to give Ben advice one time, and he didn’t listen. Nelson Cruz was coming off a 50-game suspension for performance-enhancing drugs, but he was available. Because of the suspension, I thought he was a low-risk signing that could help us. He was a big-hitting left fielder who was facing a public relations problem. That was exactly the reason he might have been available for short money. I don’t know if it was the suspension that scared Ben, or if he just didn’t like the player. I liked Cruz personally, and I believed that any problems he had in the past were behind him. That didn’t seem to matter to Ben, because talking to him about Cruz was like talking to the wall.
At 38 years old, I thought about team-building like never before. I had urgency. For most of my career, it hadn’t been my style to go to general managers and get into their shit. I was content to go about my business. But I was hungry to win as much as I could before I left the game. I was no front-office expert, but I did know a few things: Boston, good baseball players, and what we needed. I told Ben that Cruz would be perfect for our team and the city as well. Some players don’t have the toughness and thick skin necessary to play in Boston, but Cruz did. If he was slotted behind me in the lineup, we could do some damage.
That was the extent of it for me. Some players will get a GM’s ear and wear him out with opinions and observations. I’m not that kind of person. I’ll tell you the things that I think we need, and then leave it up to you to sign him or not. I’m not going to be busting your balls. We didn’t sign Cruz and he went to Baltimore, in our division, instead. I thought he was a great fit for the Orioles.
Our biggest issue, even as early as spring training, was much more serious than not having Cruz. And I admit, I was shocked by it.
Spring workouts began just four months after the World Series. Anyone who had watched the Series, and the entire playoffs, could see that Jon Lester was better than anyone else when the games were most important. He’d been great for us in each series, against three teams—the Rays, Tigers, and Cardinals—with varying styles and talent levels. He was our best starter, and we needed him. He was also in his contract year, and the Red Sox repeated an error that had been driving me crazy for years. They offered Lester a salary lower than he was worth, and you just knew that sometime soon they were going to pay an unknown player much more than his worth.
It was frustrating.
I heard a lot of talk about salaries in baseball, and how the Red Sox were not going to extend long contracts to pitchers over 30. Lester had just turned 30. I also think some peopl
e had gotten the wrong idea about how we won in 2013. We got a lot of attention for our chemistry and for signing players such as Mike Napoli, Shane Victorino, and Ryan Dempster to reasonable, short-term contracts. That was true, but we didn’t win the Series solely because of those contracts. We had a good mix of role players and stars, and it wasn’t a bad thing to have hardworking stars signed long-term.
I didn’t know what the Red Sox were thinking, but I didn’t like it. Max Scherzer was a great pitcher for the Tigers, and he was in his contract year like Lester was. Detroit tried to convince him to sign before free agency by offering him $24 million per season over six years. Boston offered Lester $17 million per season over four years. Yes, both salaries are huge when compared to the wages earned by hardworking people who are not professional athletes. In our industry, though, Scherzer’s offer was competitive and Lester’s was below market.
My deal was taken care of, and I was pleased about that. But I knew we were in trouble if we were going to maintain that stance on Lester. I had a bad feeling about us, on the field and off. How could anyone in management offer Lester that when the market called for something so much higher? What they were basically telling him was to go fuck himself.
The tone and feel of camp, players versus management, was already different than it was in 2013, and we hadn’t played a game yet. It was going to get worse, quicker than any of us expected. But before that happened, there were some light moments off the field that reminded me just how long and pleasant my baseball journey had been.
One Saturday evening, I got a call from a friend of mine who excitedly broke the news.
“Honestly, I know you’ve really made it now, brother!” he said.
I asked him what he was talking about.