Ortiz Loses His Cool

Everyone involved thought it was a joke. David Ortiz stormed into Terry Francona’s press conference with rage in his voice. “I’m [expletive] pissed. We need to have a talk, you and me.” In typical fashion, Tito dismissed Ortiz and told him he would “…be there in a minute.” The press conference continued, but speculation began to swirl throughout the media outlets about why Ortiz would be so upset. Was he left out of the lineup? When the locker rooms opened later, Ortiz was asked about the incident, but refused to comment. As it turns out, Ortiz was upset about an official scoring change, taking away one of his RBIs. The usually team-oriented Ortiz left a bad taste in many people’s mouths after that incident.

Ortiz is a respected, veteran leader on the Red Sox roster. He is often the voice of reason when things are going well and is there egging on his teammates when support is needed. His 2011 season has been an impressive resurgence for Ortiz, who was dealing with major pressures and slumps at times over the past few years. He has looked more relaxed and his production has increased to an impressive .289 average, 20 HRs and 69 RBIs (not 70, like he thought). It is no surprise that Ortiz would be upset that an RBI would be removed from his total, any human would be, but to make such a public spectacle over 1 RBI is unusual and disappointing for the big lefty.

I’m not sure what the whole story is here, honestly, this may be it. Maybe he was having a bad day and this was the tipping point, who knows, but he let his emotions get the best of him and in a moment of outrage, made an atypical scene. It’s easy to overlook and put these things behind us if the Red Sox are winning and Ortiz is performing, which he is, so this will likely fade quickly. For now, however, Ortiz will have to deal with the repercussions from making a rather idiotic mistake on a very public stage.

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