Does it even make sense how good David Ortiz is? It’s like we’re not even watching a human being anymore. It’s actually friggin’ eerie, is what it is. You need a key hit, he’s got your key hit. A couple big home runs — one to put you ahead, the other just to twist the knife after Monday’s horror show? Big Papi’s on it. In Red Sox Nation, we’re not used to such an embarassment of riches. We’re used to crossing our hands and gnashing our teeth as the likes of Dante Bichette and Carl Everett and Cliff Floyd and Jack Clark and Andre Dawson and Bernard Gilkey wave their bats fruitlessly like a pack of geriatrics trying to get Bob Barker’s attention on The Price is Right. Not so with Ortiz. You dream it, he does it. Automatic for the people. He threw the whole goddam team on his shoulders last October, and he seems fully prepared to do it again.
Good god, do I love him. And I love the fact that after the torment of Monday’s ninth inning loss, the Sox administered a jimmy kick of their own, scoring seven goddam times in the top of the tenth after — who else? — Big Papi erased a ninth inning deficit with another blistering, dramatic, saves-the-day home run. Yawn.
And we need those big hits. We need to stack up the runs like cordwood. Because, you see, we’ve got that Remlinger guy in the bullpen. And the dude serves ’em up faster than a twenty dollar whore. In just one inning of work, he promptly erased any kind memories of Papelbon’s performance, giving up two walks, two hits — one of them a grand slam — and inflating his ERA to 54.00. 54.00? That’s like six pitchers’ ERAs added together. It’s enough to prompt even the most die-hard among us to exclaim, as the great Chris Farley once did, “Holy shnikees.”
In the end, the offense let the pitching off the hook. And unless we can get Schill back in the rotation and a healthy Foulke closing games and Wells, Arroyo and Miller to step it up a notch, we’re gonna need to put up a ten-spot every night.
But so long as we got some Papi, I sleep easy.
