David Ortiz turned 44 on Monday.
Hopefully he had a nice time. Surely, it was a meaningful birthday for Ortiz having been shot in the Dominican Republic several months back. Thankfully, he seems to be doing OK now and even made his way back to Fenway Park to throw out a first pitch this season. Sadly, the team could not rally around this sad occurrence and win a World Series for David, but he did receive an outpouring of support which is nice.
It might be a good time to talk about how important Ortiz was to the ballclub. As we know, he helped the Red Sox win the World Series three times. He's the only player who was a member of all three of those World Series teams, keep in mind. And, as you recall, he was better in the postseason than he was in the regular season oftentimes. There's a reason why he got intentionally walked four times in the 2013 World Series, a six game series...
He finished his career with 541 home runs and he will definitely be an interesting Hall of Fame candidate in a couple of years. I'd definitely vote him in if afforded the opportunity. We'd have to see what some of the haters and losers of the BBWAA do though. A lot of them seem like good people, but there's also the people who hold grudges, vote against Pedro Martinez and what not. It's a mess...
Personally, I wished Ortiz had a bigger role with the Red Sox than he does at the moment. I know, I know. He's got a family. He's still around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I don't know, maybe he could be on the NESN broadcast once a week or something like that when they're home. That would be really popular with the fans…