“My hometown is way up there, man. It’s called Krypton.”
We’ve really kind of run out of superlatives to describe David Ortiz. In the first two games of this Minnesota series, the guy’s gone an astonishing 7-for-10 with four home runs, seven hits and six RBIs. Man, that’s like Will Middlebrooks’ collective output for April and May, but in just two days. He’s leading the team in home runs — in fact, he’s got as many as Napoli, Gomes and Pierzynski combined — and slugging .596 with an OPS of .992.
To put it in simpler terms, he’s still a bad ass motherf#$ker.
Put him in Minnesota, however, and his powers increase tenfold. Since the Twins released him back in 2003 and the Red Sox scooped him up, Ortiz has punished his former team, hitting .344 against them with 17 home runs. Much as Red Sox ownership reached for the Maalox every time Jeff Bagwell toppled another milestone, I’m guessing the folks who let Ortiz slip from their fingers have long since ordered one of those fancy “self ass-kicking machines” from the Air Mall catalog.
From Ortiz’s perspective, I’m sure the joy of taking his former team out behind the woodshed provides ample incentive before every Twins series. But whatever’s driving him to this type of performance needs to be bottled. You can’t tell me that with all John Henry’s fortunes he can’t hire a couple MIT punks to hook Papi up with some contact lenses that make every opponent’s uniform look like Minnesota’s.
Alls I know is that Ortiz is taking the field against Minnesota again this afternoon. And I’m fully expecting him to hit another two home runs.
