Awesome Old Video Clip of the Week: David Ortiz's first home run with the Red Sox

I don't even know where to begin to attempt to write some sort of David Ortiz career retrospective, so on the day of his last regular-season game, I'll just go with this:

In his sixth season with the Twins, a 26-year-old Ortiz hit 20 homers and drove in 75 runs in only 412 at-bats, but Minnesota released him anyway in the fall of 2002.

Ortiz's Boston career began as a platoon player, splitting time with Jeremy Giambi.  Big Papi's first Red Sox home run, the 59th of his career, didn't come until April 27, 2003, in Boston's 25th game of the season:



Ha, remember J-Lo and Ben Affleck?  They were the story that day in Anaheim--nobody on the planet could've guessed Ortiz would slug another 482 homers in a Sox uniform (and 17 more in the playoffs).  Ortiz didn't go yard again until May 24th of that year, game No. 48.  In fact, following a 6-4 win over the Tigers on June 26, Ortiz had a total of just three home runs for the 45-32 Red Sox.

However, after finally winning the full-time DH job, Papi blasted 28 dingers over Boston's last 85 games in 2003 (for a total of 31 in 448 at-bats), and the rest is history.


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