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2004 WORLD CHAMPION BOSTON RED SOX


David Americo "Big Papi" Ortiz

Born: November 18, 1975; Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic  Height: 6'4"  Weight: 230
Bats: Left  Throws: Left  Position: Designated hitter, first base  #34

Big Papi

We saw a lot of fans crying and feeling hurt and I think myself and all of my teammates, we were worried about it and kept that for ourselves. And that's one of the big reasons for us to come to the field and represent the way we did the last four games... I said to my players, "We have to make these people smile."
-- David Ortiz,  
on how the team used Game 3's loss  
as inspiration for the ALCS comeback  


2004 Statistics

GABRH2B3BHRRBIBBSOSBAVGOBPSLG
 Season 150 582 94 175 47 41 139 75 133 .301 .380 .603 
 ALDS  11  .545 .688 1.000 
 ALCS  31  12  11  .387 .457 .742 
 WS  13  .308 .471 .615 


2004 Season Highlights

•  Ortiz hit a game-winning two-run homer against Toronto in the twelfth inning on Easter Sunday. The walkoff blast landed in the Green Monster seats and gave the Sox a 6-4 win.

•  He hit the 100th home run of his career against Seattle on May 28. It was a grand slam that gave the Sox a 6-2 lead in the fifth inning.

•  Big Papi hit a solo homer in the seventh inning against the Dodgers on June 11 to give the Sox a 1-0 lead. Then after an unearned run in the top of the ninth tied the score, he was at it again, knocking in the winning run with a single in the bottom of the ninth.

•  David was named A.L. Player of the Week for the week of June 21-27, hitting .440 with four homers, three doubles, nine RBI and eight runs scored over than span. Then he started the next week off by homering in three straight games from June 27-30.

•  He went 3-for-7 in a doubleheader against Baltimore on July 22. He had his first ever two-triple game in Game 1, and finished the season with a career-high three triples.

•  Ortiz hit a solo homer in the bottom of the eighth against the White Sox on August 14 to break a 3-3 tie as they would go on to win 4-3. Eight days later in Chicago he had another tie-breaking eighth-inning homer, this time leading the Sox to a 6-5 win.

•  He finished first in the league with 91 extra-base hits and an RBI every 4.2 at-bats. He was second in RBI (139), total bases (351), and slugging percentage (.603), and tied for second with 41 home runs. His production earned him his first trip to the All-Star Game (where he hit a two-run homer and walked twice) and a fourth-place finish in MVP voting.


2004 Postseason Highlights

•  Ortiz hit .545 in the Division Series against Anaheim, with four RBI and four runs scored. He had two doubles in Game 3 as the Sox built a 6-1 lead. After the bullpen squandered the lead, Big Papi came up in the tenth with a runner on base and the Angels' only lefty on the mound. He drove the first pitch he saw into the Green Monster seats for the game-winning, series-clinching, walkoff home run.

•  He went 2-for-4 with a triple and two RBI in Game 1 of the ALCS, and was 3-for-5 with a run scored in Game 3, as the team fell to 0-3 in the series against the Yankees.

•  Big Papi was not about to let his team get swept. He had already knocked in two runs in Game 4, as the Sox battled in a 4-4 tie into extra innings. In the bottom of the twelfth, with a runner aboard, Ortiz launched a homer into the visitors' bullpen, winning the game 6-4 and extending the Sox' season for another day.

•  Game 5 started less than 16 hours after Game 4 ended, and in the eighth inning, the Sox again found themselves down 4-2 and facing elimination. David led off the inning with a homer to pull to within 4-3, and his teammates went on to tie the game and take it to the fourteenth inning. As the game neared the six-hour mark, there were two men on and two outs, when Big Papi came to the plate. On the tenth pitch of the at-bat, he dumped a bloop single into shallow center, just out of reach of the fielders who converged on it. Johnny Damon was able to race around from second to score the winning run. Since Game 4 had ended after midnight, the newly-crowned "Señor Octubre" had ended two games in the same day with walkoff hits. No player in baseball history had ever had more than two postseason walkoff hits in his career, and no one had ever had more than one in the same postseason, but Papi had three in 2004.

•  After Johnny Damon was thrown out at the plate in the first inning of Game 7, Ortiz hit the next pitch out for a two-run homer to get the Sox on the board first and preserve the momentum they had built over the past three days. When they cruised to a 10-3 win in the deciding game, David Ortiz was the easy choice for ALCS MVP.

•  He got the World Series off on a good note, too, smacking a three-run homer in the first inning of Game 1. He finished the postseason with 19 RBI, tying the major league record for RBI in a single postseason.


Every time you just say, almost in the back of your head, "Gosh, it's physically impossible for him to do it again." It's just not that easy. To continually do it night in and night out, it's ridiculous. It's a freak of nature.
-- Doug Mientkiewicz,  
on David Ortiz's posteason heroics  


Ortiz's postseason uniformThe home uniform David Ortiz wore throughout the 2004 postseason is on display at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The Red Sox played six postseason home games and won five of them - three on walkoff hits by Ortiz.


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