When Boston Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz doesn’t like something, he lets people know.
But some were wondering whether he went too far after Wednesday afternoon’s game against the Minnesota Twins.
During the seventh inning, Ortiz hit a hard grounder to first base that was knocked down by Joe Mauer. Ortiz thought it was a hit, but it was ruled an error. He expressed his emotions on the field by yelling up to scorekeeper Bob Ellis and said after the game that “the scorekeepers here are always horrible.”
General manager Ben Cherington sounded off on WEEI’s “Dennis & Callahan Show” on Thursday, saying that it can be overlooked based on Ortiz’s contributions and the fact that Boston ultimately won.
“If we had not won, you don’t necessarily get the same reaction because we won the game, and obviously he was a big part of winning the game maybe that provides some license to question the decision,” Cherington said. “But ultimately in a perfect world we’d just be focused on winning, and that’s what we’re trying to do, and we know that… look, David’s done a lot of good things for the Red Sox through the years.
“He’s an emotional guy. You can’t ask him to be emotional in all the best ways, which he’s been over and over without some emotion coming out in other ways, too, but ultimately he’s up there in the ninth inning with the game on the line and delivers as he has so many times, and we win the game, so I guess it makes it a little bit more OK to talk about a scoring call.”
Cherington said that he believed that it should have been ruled a hit, but that ultimately, winning is more important.
