Boston Red Sox baseball great David Ortiz, right, laughs with Hall of Fame pitcher Pedro Martinez, Friday, June 23, 2017, at Fenway Park in Boston as the team retired Ortiz’s jersey No. 34 worn when he led the franchise to three World Series titles. It is the 11th number retired by the Red Sox. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS—David Ortiz stepped up to the microphone, wiped the tears from his eyes and waited for the sold-out Fenway crowd to shout “Papi!” a few more times.
The Red Sox stood at the top step of their dugout. The Los Angeles Angels tipped their caps. Friends and family and dignitaries from two countries lined the infield. Three World Series trophies glistened in the twilight sun.
Hall of Famers Carl Yastrzemski, Pedro Martinez, Wade Boggs and Jim Rice — whose numbers preceded Ortiz’s to the Fenway facade — were the only ones who could know how he felt.
“It’s an honor to get to see my number right next to all those legends,” Ortiz said before his No. 34 was unveiled along the right-field roof boxes on Friday night.
“I remember hitting batting practice on this field; I always was trying to hit those numbers. But I never thought about having my number up there,” he said. “Every player that is up there did things that are very, very special for this ballclub and this community.”
Ortiz retired last season as one of the most productive offensive players in franchise history, and the single-most important player to wear a Red Sox uniform in a century. With three World Series titles — including the 2004 championship that ended an 86-year drought — Ortiz dragged the ballclub out of its dynasty of disappointment and gave a fresh generation of Bostonians reason to fall in love with the Red Sox anew.
But it was Ortiz’s defiant speech after the Boston Marathon bombings that cemented him as a civic hero and helped prompt the Red Sox to retire his number less than a year after he retired. As a nod to his foul-mouthed challenge to those who would test the city’s resolve, Ortiz took the microphone on Friday with the welcome, “This is his (pause) city.”
“There wasn’t an empty seat,” Ortiz said afterward. “It made me feel like one of the important games we had where the fans wanted to be there from the very beginning and show love and support. It was pretty amazing.”
Ortiz is the 10th Red Sox player to have his number retired, and he was joined by four of the others, plus family representing the ones who couldn’t be there. Also recognized during the ceremony were representatives from the Dominican Republic, the city of Boston, and family of Minnesota Twins Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett, from whom Ortiz adopted both his No. 34 and his ever-present smile.
“Thank you, Lord, for allowing me to give Boston the greatest gift ever: my compadre, David Ortiz,” said Martinez, who helped convince the Red Sox to sign Ortiz in 2003, a year before their curse-busting title. “You are a great ambassador of the game. I don’t have enough words to say today how proud I am, and how proud of a papa I feel today. “Yes, he is ‘Big Papi.’ But I feel like ‘Grampa.'”
Current second baseman Dustin Pedroia, Ortiz’s teammate on the 2007 and ’13 World Series champions, came out of the dugout to be enveloped in a giant bear hug.
“You’re not our teammate, you’re not our friend. You’re family,” Pedroia said. “And it will be like that until the day you die.”
With that, Ortiz broke out the handkerchief.
“Man, the little guy made me cry,” he said. “Wow.”