Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
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PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF THE WISCONSIN TIMBER RATTLERS (1996); BY AL BELLO/GETTY IMAGES (2004); MICHAEL IVINS/BOSTON RED SOX/GETTY IMAGES (2013, 2016) LOOK AT HIM NOW. Larger than life, the mayor of every room he enters. Everything about him—the swagger, that booming voice, the cars, diamonds, and endorsement deals—lets you know that David Ortiz is no ordinary man. Seeing him now, it's difficult to believe where he came from, even knowing every detail of his journey—how a skinny Dominican kid named David Arias became a future Hall of Famer known the world over as Big Papi. Like many success stories, this one could have easily never happened. Growing up in Santo Domingo, the son of a baseball player and the eldest of four children, Ortiz was imbued with a love of sport from an early age. But in a place like the Dominican Republic, he was hardly alone. He man- aged to stand out from the thousands of Dominican teens who got a look from Major League Baseball scouts in the '90s by possessing an alluring blend of size, power, and athleticism. It was enough to convince the Seattle Mariners that they had found a gem. Ortiz signed with the Mariners just days after his 17th birthday, in 1992. He experienced his ups and downs as a low-level minor leaguer, but in September 1996 he learned that he had been selected by the Minnesota Twins as the "player to be named later" in a trade that had been completed weeks earlier. He got a taste of the big leagues from 1997 to '99 and was a part-time player for the three years that followed. But in 2002, instead of re-signing him for a meager $1 million, the Twins released Ortiz, leaving him on baseball's scrap heap at 27. It seemed that his brief, relatively anonymous career was over. Ortiz recalls his mind-set after getting dumped by the Twins. "Just don't give up on your dreams," he says. "You're always going to face problems on the road that are going to try to tell you not to go. And it's up to you if you want to let that happen." Fortunately, Ortiz had the best pitchman possible on his side. Fellow Dominican Pedro Martinez owned the city of Boston as the ace starting pitcher for the Red Sox, and as someone who had known Ortiz for years and believed in his untapped ability as a ball- player, he persuaded Boston's front office that Ortiz was worthy of a contract. So the Red Sox took a flyer on him. It was soon clear why. October of 2003, Game 4 of the American League Division Series: Ortiz delivered a go- ahead double and sent a tense Fenway Park into a state of glorious delirium. It continued in 2004, when he delivered two walk-off hits on consecutive nights against the Yankees to spark the greatest comeback in sports history—the first a violent clobbering of a baseball in the wee hours of the morning, the next a less majestic but equally uplifting single delivered later that same calen- dar day. With those hits, he accomplished what few Boston baseball players have ever been able to: He made the fans believe. Put simply, Ortiz had a knack for coming through when needed the most. "I don't think anybody knew what he was when he arrived, or what it was going to be," says Tony Massarotti, the sports radio host and former baseball writer who cowrote Ortiz's 2007 book, Big Papi: My Story of Big Dreams and Big Hits. "There's no way any- body could have possibly understood what was coming." Anybody, that is, except Ortiz. "I knew I could do it. I just didn't know how it was going to be," he says. "I mean, I knew I had the talent to play the game." "YOU'RE ALWAYS GOING TO FACE PROBLEMS ON THE ROAD TO YOUR DREAMS. JUST DON'T GIVE UP. IT'S UP TO YOU." —DAVID ORTIZ 80 BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM Tryout: Twenty- year-old David Ortiz (then known as David Arias) leads the minor- league Wisconsin Timber Rattlers in hits, runs, home runs, and RBIs. Superstar status: At Fenway Park, Ortiz hits a walk-off home run in extra innings to win the 2004 ALDS for Boston against the Anaheim Angels. The Red Sox would go on to defeat the St. Louis Cardinals for their first World Series title since 1918. 1996 2004