Eduardo Nunez explained why he’s ’embarrassed’ by the David Ortiz shooting
"For us, as Dominican players, it's a very bad image. It is an international shame."
Red Sox infielder Eduardo Nunez says he got to check in with David Ortiz in the wake of his shooting earlier this week in the Dominican Republic. And despite narrowly surviving an attempt on his life and undergoing two surgeries, the retired Red Sox legend’s first point of interest was how Nunez was doing.
“I replied, ‘Hey, it’s not about how am I doing, it’s about how you’re doing! You tell me!” Nunez told ESPN’s Marly Rivera on Wednesday.
Nunez, who is friends with Ortiz and has the same agent, told Rivera that he got to talk with Ortiz over the phone Tuesday as his fellow Dominican continued to recuperate at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. And while he was glad to hear Ortiz was making good progress, Nunez had a few strong words of condemnation for the “unimaginable” attack in his native country.
“For us, as Dominican players, it’s a very bad image,” he said. “It is an international shame.”
Nunez said Ortiz is a “very special person” and an “icon” of baseball in their home country, who has “opened so many doors for younger Dominican players and Latinos in general.” The 43-year-old’s charitable foundation is also devoted to supporting children in the Dominican. Ortiz has talked in the past about how baseball was his escape from a childhood surrounded by violence.
“We feel very embarrassed about what happened to him because he is a legend from our homeland, and this happened to him in our homeland,” Nunez said.
Dominican police announced Wednesday that they had arrested six suspects, including the alleged gunman, in the shooting case. The motive of the attack remains unclear, though an official told the Associated Press the possibility that Ortiz unknowingly formed a relationship during a trip to the Dominican that set off a chain of events that led to the shooting was under investigation.
