This is a part of a series in which NESN personalities share their favorite memory of David Ortiz as they had an up-close view of his career either as a teammate or a member of the media. You can find all of NESN.com’s coverage as Ortiz goes into the Hall of Fame here.
The career of longtime broadcaster Dave O’Brien will forever be intertwined with David Ortiz.
O’Brien, who is the play-by-play voice for Boston Red Sox games on NESN, was on the radio call for WEEI during Game 2 of the American League Championship Series in 2013 at Fenway Park when Ortiz produced one of the biggest hits of his career.
O’Brien narrated the stunning events in real-time as Ortiz smacked a game-tying grand slam in the bottom of the eighth inning against the Detroit Tigers and Tori Hunter tumbled over wall and into the bullpen.
It created a signature moment for both hitter and broadcaster — one of many, for sure — with O’Brien capturing the utter amazement of Big Papi delivering in a pressure-packed situation again by repeating Ortiz’s name three times as he rounded the bases.
“That one, without question for me, will always stand out,” O’Brien said. “I thought (it) was arguably the biggest home run of his career because if the Sox don’t win that game — if he doesn’t tie the game and they go on to win — they go down 0-2 to that pitching staff, which included Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer, going to Detroit, and I don’t think they ever get anywhere near the World Series that year.”
O’Brien sometimes ponders what would have happened if Ortiz’s hit never made it over the wall. If he merely hit a bloop double or just drove in a run with a single. But that wasn’t Ortiz’s style.
Given Ortiz’s prowess at the plate and his ability to seize the moment, especially on a playoff stage, O’Brien sensed from the broadcast booth that the left-handed slugger was bound to do something special when Joaquin Benoit threw his first pitch to Ortiz.
“A base hit, a double, a triple, it didn’t matter. None of that would have ever been noted, but he hit a grand slam in a spot where you’re sitting there high above Fenway going, ‘I think he might hit a grand slam,’ because he’s David Ortiz,” O’Brien said. “Because he is the mammoth talent that he was, and wouldn’t you know, he did exactly that.”
Ortiz’s knack for rising to the occasion at the most critical junctures in a game was certainly illustrated with that gigantic grand slam — it helped the Red Sox walk off with a key victory on a Jarrod Saltalamacchia single an inning later.
It’s a quality Ortiz showed throughout his career, and one O’Brien believes separated him from other hitters, particularly when the lights were the brightest.
“I thought that was the most extraordinary thing about David’s career while I was lucky enough to cover him,” O’Brien said. “It was the expectation, he’s going to do something incredible here, and it felt like he did it every time. Best clutch hitter I ever saw, or I think will ever see.”
