From There to Here

I’ve got no clever title for this blog entry.

It’s been a while since I updated, but I wanted to write something down about this. Something that chronicles how I feel, what I think and where I’m at.

I’ve never loved any sports team more than I loved the 2004 Boston Red Sox. The collection of guys — from Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz all the way down to Alan Embree and Curtis “The Mechanic” Leskanic — were nothing short of incredible. Ortiz, Millar, Damon and OCab kept the clubhouse light. Foulke pitched lights out baseball that maybe cut his career short. Dave Roberts stole the most famous base in baseball history a few nights before the eyes of a nation turned its eyes to the bleeding ankle of a 37-year-old man with a proclivity to make New Yorkers shut up.

But really, the center of the excitement was Ortiz. Here was this guy who had been released from the Twins, and we picked him up in 2003. He played great baseball that year, but it wasn’t really until 2004 — and the playoffs — that he became a folk hero in the Boston sports pantheon that had been reserved for Tom Brady, Larry Bird, Ted Williams, Bill Russell and Bobby Orr. Pull up another chair, boys. We’re inducting a sixth Boston legend.

He had the game winning hit in Game 4 of the ALCS. He broke an epic tie and had the game winning hit in Game 5, sending the series back to New York. I have watched these games, from start to finish, dozens of times. LITERALLY. He was our hero. He was Big Papi. And he was the most clutch hitter in the history of the Sox.

In 2005, he and Manny both shined. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but I remember them being the first pair of teammates since Gehrig and Ruth to go past 40 HR, 140 RBI in the same season. In 2006, he hit 54 homers. In 2007, he was ravaged by injuries, but still hit 35 bombs and carried us in the postseason. In 2008, he was injured, but still had a defining moment — he became a United States citizen.

Ortiz had been our hero, had been our legend. Sports writers compared Ortiz to Brady as to who was the best Boston sports legend of this decade and the debate raged on. I’d go back and forth. Brady had the three Super Bowls, the MVPs, countless other awards and accolades, but he had become a fiercely private person. Ortiz was congenial, jovial, a tremendous ballplayer and a hell of a man. To me, his character stood elevated along with his accolades, as he truly was one of the all-time Sox legends. And he truly was beloved by everyone in Boston.

This is how beloved Ortiz is: his average hovering around .200 and the first two months of the season being a complete joke, it looked as if he may be benched. But Francona kept putting him in the lineup, kept asking him to bat third and expecting a different result. I went to the Sox/Mets tilt at Fenway on May 23rd to watch Ortiz. When he came up in the eighth, he took a called third strike and went to sit back down on the bench. I booed relentlessly. So did other people in the section, except they were booing ME. I’m sorry? We can’t boo this guy? We can’t let him know he needs to do better? No. He’s David Ortiz. A Boston icon. And one of the only ones, along with Tom Brady, who gets our unconditional love.

That love now, my friends, is gone. Ortiz is a fraud, a fake. He’s a joke. But really the joke is on all of us. Because he made us believe. He made us believe a guy could go from being cut one year by one team to being another team’s folk hero. How could I have been so naive to think that Ortiz wasn’t juicing? I want to know when he started. And I want to know when he stopped. And anything short of that will be an even bigger disappointment.

David, please come clean. Tell us what you find out. Tell us everything that happened. Tell us when, why, how much and for how long. And tell us why you felt the pressure to do it and tell us not to make the same mistakes you made. It’s something I’ve heard from athletes far too many times now, but right now, you’re up there with McGwire, Sosa and Raffy. You’re up there with BONDS.

I want to put you up there with Andy Pettitte. I want to put you up there with Rodney Harrison. Did you cheat? Yes. But give us all the facts and tell us why. Don’t sweep it under the rug and don’t ignore it. Make that “No comment” you gave The NY Times the last one we hear from you on this subject. Talk about it until you’re blue in the face and talk some more. Embrace this as an opportunity to educate not only us in Boston, but also those in the Dominican, about the dangers of steroids and the crippling effect they can have on your body.

Do all that, and while it will be tough to earn my respect again, maybe — just maybe — you’ll have my forgiveness.