Boston Red Sox

It’s hard to make sense of the Red Sox without David Ortiz

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David Ortiz made it OK to be a Red Sox fan. Charles Krupa / AP

By Rich Levine

October 13, 2016

4 minutes to read

COMMENTARY

Writing about sports for a living is a pretty good gig, but right now it’s no fun at all.

Sitting here after the Red Sox’ 4-3 loss to Cleveland, the big question is which monumental disappointment to focus on. The old school playoff collapse? The fact that David Ortiz is now a former Red Sox slugger? If there was a third option to dip both my hands into a wood chipper, I might take it.

That’s not true but at least it’s a distraction. We could all use one. The light of a few more days has done little make sense of what went down Monday night at Fenway. First, the premature and brutal end of another promising season – in this case a tribute to ghosts of Red Sox past that saw six months of well-earned trust scattered across a baseball field and set on fire with a blowtorch. You have to admit, you didn’t know these guys still had it in them – you know, that power to convince you something is real, to push you to the brink of what you’ll believe, then give a wink and light up your chin with a brass-knuckle sucker punch.

We’ve been here before. We know what this is like. When this used to happen all the time, back in the bad old days, it was followed by long spats of misery on top of bitterness on top of lingering questions about what you did to deserve your fate as a Red Sox fan. But even in the aftermath of this pathetic playoff whimper, 2016 is different – and there are two reasons.

One positive. One negative.

Both David Ortiz.

On the ugly side, the absolute and undeniable worst part of Monday night is the way it ended. With Ortiz standing on the pitcher’s mound with both hands in the air, tears in his eyes, saluting fans for the last time as a major leaguer. There will come time when that makes sense, where it feels normal to talk about Ortiz in the past tense, but right now it’s crazy and plain sad to think it’s over. It’s hard to believe we’ll never again see No. 34 spit into his hands, drag Dustin Pedroia’s weight in chains into the batter’s box, and do what he did better than anyone who ever wore a Red Sox jersey. It hasn’t kicked in that Ortiz has now worn that jersey for the last time or that when we look back on that scene on the mound – not just the picture of Ortiz saluting the crowd, but the one with all the cameramen taking a picture of the picture — we’re looking at the lasting image of the greatest Red Sox player who ever lived.

David Ortiz tipped his cap for the last time Monday night.

It’s a photo generations of fans will come to know him by, and it’s weird to think about a time when everything in that photo will look ancient. It won’t be long either. Here in 2016, photos from the ‘90s are already trending that way. Today we’re 30 years removed from the ball going through Buckner’s legs. That feels like so long ago. Photos from that series look like they were taken on another planet. In turn that 1986 season was only 30 years removed from 1956 – which today feels like it happened only shortly after an asteroid wiped out all the dinosaurs. Before we know it another 30 years will pass and kids who are now full grown adults will see the photo of Ortiz on the mound and have a good laugh like Oh my god, what’s with those giant cameras? People really carried those around? Haha and look at the haircuts and the non-hologram advertisements! Remember when everyone wore jeans?

They’ll respect Ortiz on a god like level but they’ll never really understand what he did, or what it was like to watch him do it or how strange it feels to say goodbye.

They’ll hear the stories but they’ll never live them.

There will be no way to process the magnitude of this one simple statement:

David Ortiz made it OK to be a Red Sox fan.

That thanks to Ortiz – and obviously so many others but he’s the tie that binds all three titles – Sox fans can now take an occasional brass knuckle upper cut and do so with a little dignity. Sure, there’s still frustration and anger. There’s that masochistic desire to replay every illogical decision that leaked out of John Farrell’s brain and every pitch that left David Price’s left hand – but there’s no more deep twisted inner turmoil. There’s no more “woe is me, what did I do deserve this?” Instead it’s the opposite. We’re pinching ourselves. The tone isn’t sarcastic but humble and grateful, like honestly, what did we do to deserve this? How insanely fortunate to live in the time of David Ortiz? Even if this latest unraveling feels so much worse because Ortiz is now history, everything else is better because Ortiz was and always will be our reality.