David Ortiz, A-Rod haven’t spoken in almost a year
There’s some compelling drama coming out of the 7th Annual David Ortiz Celebrity Golf Classic.
The Red Sox superstar revealed a bit of juicy gossip at his charity event in the Dominican Republic on Thursday: He and Alex Rodriguez haven’t spoken to each other in 11 whole months.
Rodriguez is noticeably absent from this year’s event and it turns out he and Ortiz have a severely strained friendship. The clash began when Rodriguez’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, (the one who isn’t suing him) appeared on ESPN radio back in January and had this to say about past PED use in Major League Baseball: “I’m not going to start naming the other players, but some of them are God-like in Boston right now, and people seem to forget that.”
This guy clearly wanted to be starting something because he didn’t even try to veil that jab. Tacopina was obviously talking about Ortiz even though he later said he wasn’t talking about him and was just referring to “other players in general.”
Sure.
When asked the other day what he thought of the comments, Ortiz, as always, didn’t beat around the bush: “I was angry,” he said. “I haven’t talked to him since.”
Interesting.
Ortiz also remarked on how he thinks Rodriguez will perform in his return to baseball next season: “We’ll see what happens, I wish him the best. We’ll see how strong he can come back and do his thing.”
“I’ve seen players taking a year off and it’s fine, you get away with it, but at our age, taking a year off is not the easiest thing for you to come back and be at the highest level when the last year he played [2013] wasn’t all there because of injury, so we’ll see what happens.”
We may have to wait until batting practice on April 10 when the Red Sox and Yankees meet again to see if the two will reconcile. If I’m Ortiz, I would forget about this creep and hang out with literally anyone else before the game.
In other news, the Golf Classic, which benefits the David Ortiz Children’s Fund, seems to be a smashing success. If you would like to contribute, you can go to this website and bid on priceless auction items, like “3 Innings Behind the Green Monster,” or “Four Tickets to a Darius Rucker Concert.”