Numero uno, babyJust announced: David Ortiz will stay a Red Sox through the 2010 season, with an option for 2011. That’s four years at least, kids…four years of balls crushed to all fields, of hilarious press conferences, of big grins and complicated high fives. Four years of late inning heroics and MVP, supah-clutch hitting. As no doubt most of you have noticed, David Ortiz is my favorite Red Sox, so I’m beyond ecstatic that the team got this deal done now before it could become an issue in the off-season or, more importantly, before another team could swoop down and snatch Boston’s franchise player away. As it turns out, Theo not only agreed with me by making the signing he’d be foolish to ignore, but actually said so in the post-signing press conference: Ortiz was the signing the team had to do now, because they wouldn’t be able to afford to wait for free agency. Varitek is the Captain, Wakefield is the Elder Statesman and now Ortiz is the Face of the Team.
Speaking of the heroics of the 2004 ALCS, Robin and I were watching this clip on The San Diego Serenade, where a guy took the audio feed Vin Scully’s broadcast from Game 6 of the 1986 World Series and put it with video he captured from R.B.I. Baseball to recreate those last few fateful moments where the Red Sox blew their chances to win. It’s worth checking out – if nothing else, it’s incredible how much emotional power some audio can give to a bunch of 8-bit characters playing baseball – but while we were watching Mookie Wilson foul pitch after pitch, Robin commented that the tension we were feeling about Bob Stanley being unable to close the door was probably how Yankee fans felt at the end of Games 4 and 5. Rereading the posts now, a year and a half later, I’m still not entirely sure how it all happened. I’m just really, really glad that the man at the center of it all wants to be in Boston for the rest of his career.
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