David Ortiz has had an unlikely path to greatness.
It’s easy to remember all of his success in Boston – the World Series rings, launching hundreds of home runs – but at one time, his career was on life support. As outlined in a piece by Ortiz in the Players Tribune, following his release from the Minnesota Twins in 2002, his baseball trajectory was going downward, until an encounter at a restaurant with Pedro Martinez changed everything.
Down in the dumps, Martinez told Ortiz that it was “amazing,” Ortiz was released.
Pedro pulls out his cell phone and walks outside. At this point I’m thinking, Did I do something to this guy? What the hell is going on?
A couple minutes later, Pedro walks back into the restaurant and tells me that he just got off the phone with Theo Epstein, the new general manager of the Boston Red Sox.
“You’re going to play for us!” he says. “Well, actually, I just got Epstein’s voicemail. But I told him that you’re a special player and he’s gotta sign you. We need you, man. We need you!”
I’m like, “For real?”
He says, “For real, homie.”
Ortiz says he owes his success to Martinez, and the two have become brothers.
“I’m a World Series champion because of Pedro,” Ortiz wrote. “He is the most loyal guy I’ve ever met in baseball. He cares about everybody.”
