On Sunday, 24 July 2022, 45-year old Santo Domingo-born David Americo Ortiz Arias became the fourth Dominican to be elected to Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame. Other Dominicans before him were Juan Marichal with the San Francisco Giants, Pedro Martínez with the Boston Red Sox, and Vladimir Guerrero with the Montreal Expos.
Ortiz is regarded as one of the greatest designated hitters of all times with 581 home runs. He was part of the Boston Red Sox teams that won three championship titles – 2004, 2007 and 2013. The legendary Boston Red Sox slugger was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on 25 January 2022.
He is known as Big Papi and is regarded as one of the most popular ball players of all times. He is especially remembered for being a key player in the Boston Red Sox team that won the 2004 World Series baseball team against the St. Louis Cardinals, ending an 86-year old World Series championship drought for the team. Big Papi won the 2004 championship playing with fellow Dominicans, Hall of Fame pitcher Pedro Martínez and slugger Manny Ramírez.
Playing for Boston, he would go on to win two more World Series, that of 2007 against the Colorado Rockies and that of 2013 against the St. Louis Cardinals. He was named the World Series Most Valuable Player of the 2013 World Series.
Ortiz says the most important moment of his career was in 2013, when the Boston Red Sox won a World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals after that city suffered a terrorist attack during the Boston Marathon. On 20 April 2013, before the first game played at Fenway Park since the Boston Marathon bombing, Ortiz would be immortalized for his emotional words to the crowd: “This is our fucking city, and no one is going to dictate our freedom. Stay strong.”
Speaking during a conference before his induction into the Hall of Fame, Ortiz said: “That was an epic moment, because it is no longer about a sport, it is about us as citizens, an emblematic city and that in the middle of the Boston Marathon something that is known worldwide and that everyone is familiar with that, because everyone has a sick family member, then that year how things started and how they ended, not even a movie that you want to film ends like that so perfect after the storm as it began that year, it was a year that marked me a lot.”
He was signed in 1992 to his first MLB team by the Seattle Mariners, traded to the Minnesota Twins in 1996, and then to Boston Red Sox in 2003.
In the Dominican Republic he played seven seasons with the Escogido. He did not win a local championship but made three playoffs.
At the HOF, he spoke soberly in English, and with Latin flare in Spanish to his fans, said Yancen Pujols, the CDN sports reporter who traveled to Cooperstown, New York to cover the sports event.
He spoke after the words of fellow electees Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Minnie Miñoso, Tony Oliva, Bud Fowler and Buck O’Neil.
Read more:
David Ortiz speech
El Dia
El Dia
YouTube – daughter of Ortiz sings anthem
Baseball Hall of Fame
Wikipedia
Baseball Almanac
The Bleacher Report
Con las Bases Llenas
El Caribe
25 July 2022