An Oral History Of David Ortiz's "MLB Adventure"

Scott Miller, Bleacher Report: "Big Man, Big Personality: The Oral History of David Ortiz's MLB Adventure":

David Ortiz: I got lucky that I bumped into Pedro Martinez in a restaurant in the Dominican Republic. We talked, he asked me how things were going and I said, "I just got released by Minnesota a couple of days ago." And he was like, "What? They must be out of their mind. You're the best hitter they've got. I'm going to call the Red Sox right now." He called the Red Sox, and two days later the Red Sox hired me. The rest is history.

...

Doug Mientkiewicz: Craziness. He made Manny look mortal. Everything we needed to get done, he did. Seemed like every time we needed a big hit, he was up. Not taking anything away from Manny because he's one of the best right-handed hitters ever to play. But he's hitting singles and David's hitting homers and doubles. I was on deck during the Loaiza at-bat, watching him foul balls off and foul balls off and finally fight one off to center. You kept thinking, "We can't keep leaving it up to him. He can't keep doing it every night." And he did.

...

Theo Epstein: What he did in the Yankees series was as transformative a performance as I think you can have in baseball over a couple of days. No one in baseball wins a game single-handedly—maybe a dominant starting pitcher on a single day—but we were so down and out and he was so feared in that lineup, yet they still couldn't avoid him enough. We were so desperate for another breath. We just wanted to keep surviving, and it was David who kept delivering to give us that extra breath. ... I remember he was drained by the time we got to New York, but he kept delivering time and time again, seemingly beyond belief.

...

Jake Peavy, Red Sox teammate 2013-2014: David Price had our number that year, really gave it to us. In Game 2 of the ALDS, David [Ortiz] comes in dressed like he was getting ready to have dinner with the Pope. Some of the guys gave him a hard time about it: "It wasn't travel day; we're going to travel tomorrow." David simply responds, "You guys think I'm dressed like this for travel? Come on. I've been in the league however many years." "So what are you dressed like that for?" "My press conference," he says. And he hit two home runs off of David Price, came in and put that suit on and [went to] the press conference looking very suave.

...

Theo Epstein: He's probably the single person most identifiable with this decade-plus run of success the Red Sox have had. He got there in '03 when we got five outs from the World Series, and then he was right in the middle of it when we won it the next year, and he's still there trucking along after all these years. If the face of your franchise is a happy, smiling stud in the middle of your order for 10-plus years, that's a really good thing to have. He's really helped transform that franchise. He definitely did more for us than we did for him.