The only thing that David Ortiz smashed Sunday was a little white ball with red laces.
He did it repeatedly.
Ortiz went 4-for-4 with a two-run homer as the Red Sox rolled to a 5-0 victory over the Orioles at Camden Yards. Ortiz’s offensive outburst came less than 24 hours after his emotional outburst, and his assault on Orioles pitching Sunday made Saturday’s telephone demolition look tame by comparison.
“Anytime you go 4-for-4, that might be a way of [silencing the crowd],” John Farrell told reporters after the game. “He had a lot of hard contact. After he took it out on the phone [Saturday] night, he took it out on the baseball today. It was good to see.”
Ortiz was ejected from Saturday’s game after arguing with home plate umpire Tim Timmons. Ortiz thought he had worked a walk in the seventh inning, which prompted him to flip his bat aside, but Timmons called a high 3-0 pitch a strike — much to Ortiz’s displeasure. Ortiz then struck out two pitches later, at which point he got ejected for arguing and went berserk on the telephone hanging in the visitor’s dugout in Baltimore.
It was a crazy scene, and the incident gave Orioles fans attending Sunday’s game plenty of material to work with. Ortiz was showered with boos from the second he stepped onto the field, with one fan even dressing up as a damaged phone.
By the time the later innings rolled around Sunday, the boo birds were forced to deal with chants of, “Let’s go Red Sox,” taking Camden Yards back to a time when the ballpark featured far less orange and much more red. Ortiz, vilified for damaging some local property, made sure that he walked away with the last laugh in a successful series for the Red Sox.
“I like the crowd going crazy, cheering against me,” Ortiz said. “I like that. That’s why I love playing in New York. That gets me going.”
Ortiz insisted after Sunday’s game that Saturday’s incident is in the rearview mirror, even sounding a bit remorseful for causing such a distraction. But Ortiz’s four-hit effort, which included a two-run homer in the third inning, reinforced the notion that the nine-time All-Star plays his best when he’s thrust into the spotlight.
“He always elevates his game,” Dustin Pedroia told reporters Sunday. “Seems like when the pressure’s on or when people get on him or something like that. He swung the bat great and gave us a huge boost today.”
This time, the boost came at the expense of baseballs, which is far less frowned upon.
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