As of the All-Star Break, 22,749 players have appeared in a Major League Baseball game. Just 268 of those — a sliver more than one percent — are enshrined in the Hall of Fame, which has often been called the most exclusive club in sports.
But there’s a subset that’s even more elite — the 59 Hall of Famers elected in their first year of eligibility, which works out to one-quarter of one percent of anyone to don a uniform.
Yet of those 59 men, only David Ortiz — slated to be officially inducted Sunday afternoon in Cooperstown, N.Y. — has a singular moment that can be viewed as the exact instant in which he began turning into a Hall of Famer: The 14th-inning walk-off RBI single he delivered on Oct. 18, 2004 to lift the Boston Red Sox to a 5-4 win over the New York Yankees in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series.
Cooperstown is calling! pic.twitter.com/de1K5bHxlZ
— Red Sox (@RedSox) January 25, 2022
It was the second extra-inning walk-off hit in fewer than 24 hours for Ortiz, who homered off Paul Quantrill to give the Red Sox a 6-4, 12-inning victory in Game 4. And of course, without the first hit — which ensured the Red Sox would not be swept by the Yankees in the best-of-seven ALCS — the second one never happens.
But Ortiz’s dramatics in Game 5 not only made the Red Sox’s seemingly impossible task — continuing their march to the franchise’s first championship since 1918 by overcoming a three games to none deficit against the hated rival Yankees — much more realistic but also underlined how he’d become the game’s most clutch performer and dangerous hitter.
Via my scribblings from Game 5 of the 2004 ALCS — which I wrote about in my role as the editor of a website and magazine covering the Red Sox— and interviews this month with former Red Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo and first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz, here’s what it was like to be there at the moment a Hall of Fame career was launched.
Just finished what I hope is a fun story looking back at David Ortiz delivering his 2d straight walk-off RBI in G5 of the '04 ALCS–and how it's perhaps the most singular moment ever produced by a player in launching his HOF bid. My scorebook from that night. (Hoarding pays off!) pic.twitter.com/Bsb1bMirrZ
— Jerry Beach (@JerryBeach73) July 22, 2022
The Red Sox had no shortage of players who were able to properly convey what they’d just seen at a macro and micro level.
“This is it, man,” said Kevin Millar, showing off the gift of gab that would make him the host of “Intentional Talk” on MLB Network following his retirement. “We have a chance to shock America. We have a chance to shock the United States of America. There’s no pressure. We have a chance to do something no one’s ever done — down 0-3 and win a best-of-seven series.”
But no one was as eloquently wide-eyed as Mientkiewicz, who had the most unique vantage points of anyone in Fenway Park. Mientkiewicz, a teammate with Ortiz on the Minnesota Twins from 1998 through 2002, was on deck as Ortiz battled Esteban Loaiza.
“I caught myself in, like, the 13th inning smiling, saying ‘I’ll finally get on ESPN Classic,’” Mientkiewicz said after the game. “I’m the fat kid on deck when David got a hit. So that’s pretty cool.”
Innumerable airings on MLB Network and YouTube later, it’s still pretty cool to Mientkiewicz.
“I can sit here and talk like three hours about that guy,” Mientkiewicz said last week. “He’d go 0-for-5 in Double-A and strike out three times and get on the bus after the game and he’d walk by and be like ‘I feel sorry for that guy tomorrow.’ He’d go out and hit two home runs. That’s just how he was, that’s just how he thought. And I was like, damn, dude. It’s easy to say but to turn around and do it almost every single time is miraculous.”
Battling knee injuries resulting from the unforgiving turf at the Metrodome and occasionally battling management over what kind of hitter he should be —“They wanted David to be me and me to be David,” said Mientkiewicz, who had at least 20 doubles in a season six times but never hit more than 15 homers — Ortiz batted .266 with 58 homers and 238 RBIs in six seasons with the Twins before he was released in December 2002.
Ortiz finished fifth in the AL MVP balloting with the Red Sox in 2003 and was a fully developed hitter by the time Mientkiewicz arrived in Boston as a trade deadline acquisition in 2004.
“I feel like David had figured out at some point in ’03 how to cover a side of the plate he possibly couldn’t have covered before, and I would suspect that would be the inner half,” Arroyo said. “I think most teams thought they could get him on the inner half and beat him on the inside being a big guy with long arms. And I think he found a way to make that half of the plate feel comfortable.
“And once you feel like you have the ability to (compete) even with their best stuff in your weakest place, then it just brings a real sense of calm to how you stand at the plate, even in the biggest of situations. You don’t have this thought in the back of your mind like ‘I know Mariano Rivera is about to beat me on the inner half.’”
Ortiz — who extended the ALCS by hitting Quantrill’s tailing sinker into the bullpen in right field — wasn’t facing fellow Hall of Famer Rivera in Game 5. But Loaiza, throwing a cutter taught to him by Rivera, entered the 14th inning having tossed five scoreless frames as a reliever in the playoffs.
David Ortiz is the only player in MLB Postseason history with as many as 3 walk-off RBI in extra innings:
2004 ALDS-G3 (HR, 10th inn.)
2004 ALCS-G4 (HR, 12th inn.)
2004 ALCS-G5 (single, 14th inn.)— J.P. Long (@SoxNotes) January 25, 2022
Loaiza walked Johnny Damon with one out and Manny Ramirez with two outs to bring up Ortiz. Mientkiewicz, sitting on deck but 0-for-7 against Loaiza in 2004, began preparing himself for Loaiza intentionally walking Ortiz.
“I was like ‘Stay engaged, stay engaged, they’re gonna walk him,’” Mientkiewicz said. “Just pacing back and forth. I was like ‘This is my turn. This is meant to be. I’m gonna get it. There’s no way they pitch to him.
“And the at-bat went on for what seemed like 45 minutes.”
With the count 1-1, Ortiz fouled off three straight pitches. He took ball two before fouling off three more pitches. Finally, on pitch number 10, Loaiza’s cutter sailed inside.
“I just remember seeing the ball come out of Loaiza’s hand up a little bit in the zone and David was just so locked in,” Mientkiewicz said.
“On the inner half, a broken bat, trying to get in on him,” Arroyo said.
Ortiz fisted a blooper that dropped into centerfield. Bernie Williams, playing back, didn’t make a throw home as Damon raced home to set off another raucous celebration at Fenway Park.
“I always say that was the toughest at-bat I never got,” Mientkiewicz said with a laugh.
The Correct answer is David Ortiz, 2004 ALCS vs Yankees. https://t.co/zrRyuF6pr2
— Kurt Blakeway (@Hey_Blakeway) June 14, 2022
It was Ortiz’s third walk-off hit of the postseason and completed the cycle of sorts. His AL Division Series-winning homer against the Anaheim Angels soared over the Green Monster in left field.
“(In) ’03 and ’04, David left the ballpark to all parts of the field,” Arroyo said. “In big game situations, you always felt like people were trying to crowd him. And he found a way to get it done there by dumping the ball into centerfield after the night before hitting a home run to right centerfield.”
With “Tessie” blasting out of Fenway Park’s loudspeakers, the 35,120 fans spilled on to the Boston streets believing the unimaginable could actually happen. And Ortiz helped close out the greatest comeback in baseball history two nights later, when he sparked a 10-3 win by hitting a two-run homer one pitch after Damon was thrown out at the plate in the first inning.
"What the Yankees did to us in 2003, we then did the same, but four times better in 2004."
David Ortiz sat down with @TelemundoNI's @JesusQuinonezTV and @carmenmartinezp to reflect on the experience of beating the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS 🏆 pic.twitter.com/eN4gCbTCwp
— NBC Sports Boston (@NBCSBoston) July 22, 2022
Ortiz, who hit .387 with three homers — the other one tied Game 5 in the eighth inning — and 11 RBIs, was perhaps the most obvious LCS MVP choice of all-time. He then opened the World Series with a three-run first-inning homer for the Red Sox, who never trailed the St. Louis Cardinals in a four-game sweep that finally ended the most famous championship drought in American sports.
“Put it to you this way: I think the world of Manny Ramirez as a hitter — to me, he’s in the top three that I ever played against,” Mientkiewicz said. “What David did made Manny look mortal in the postseason.
“I think (outfielder) Gabe Kapler said it best. He said what David is doing is miraculous. And that’s the perfect word. Because it’s hard enough to get hits in October, let alone big ones and let alone homers. But he did it every single time we needed it.”
Ortiz kept doing it for the Red Sox, for whom he hit 483 regular season homers while leading the team to two more championships in 2007 and 2013. He hit .370 with three homers, 11 RBIs and a .508 on-base percentage during the 2007 postseason and .353 with five homers, 13 RBIs and a .500 on-base percentage during the 2013 playoffs — including a comical .688 (11-for-16) with a .760 on-base percentage while winning World Series MVP honors.
But for all of that subsequent postseason success, those who were at Fenway Park on Oct. 18, 2004 will watch Ortiz head into the Hall of Fame this weekend knowing they all witnessed a point of delineation unmatched in baseball history.
“To see David do the meat and potatoes — or at least put some really, really good work towards that Hall of Fame bid — in his prime, in my prime and to get to see it standing next to each other knowing you’re going out at night and watching these guys salsa dance in the basement of a club in Kansas City and then watching them go to the ballpark and do that (and) you’re there for those moments, you don’t get to see that always,” Arroyo said. “I just feel very fortunate to have been there at that time.”
“I say this a lot about my career: I was in the right place at the right time a lot of times,” Mientkiewicz said. “And I got to watch one of the best people on planet Earth do things that no one’s ever done.”
