Biggie Played Dead (One Sixty-Two: Day 39)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day Thirty-Nine: David Ortiz, Boston Red Sox

Toward the end of a glorious Memorial Day weekend at the beach, Katie was digging in the sand by the water’s edge. As Amy and I lounged in the sun, our daughter came running up to us, her orange pail in hand.

“Mommy, I found a big crab!” she exclaimed, showing her mom a sand crab that was slightly more than an inch long an inch wide. Katie quickly named her crab “Biggie,” and soon had two smaller crabs in the pail to keep him company. The companions were named Sammy and Georgie.

Every few minutes, Katie would reach into the sandy bucket and lift Biggie out to inspect him. After a minute of checking him out, she’d drop Biggie back into the pail, and he’d quickly dig his way into the sand at the bottom of the bucket. After several minutes of this back and forth, Katie again dropped Biggie into the pail. But this time, instead of digging, he lay motionless in the water. Upside-down.

After a moment, the tears began rolling down Katie’s cheeks, and the guilt set in. She blamed herself for poor Biggie’s death, for all that lifting him out of his element. But just as we prepared to bury him, Biggie suddenly flipped himself over, scurried into the sand, and left an 8-year-old girl laughing away the tears.

Biggie played dead. Was that a recent headline in The Boston Globe? And didn’t I read those words in Beantown last spring, too? In Massachusetts, Biggie is better known as Big Papi, who is better known to the rest of us as David Ortiz, designated hitter for the Boston Red Sox. In 2009 and 2010, Ortiz started his baseball seasons in miserable fashion. Last year, Ortiz had just one home run and 33 hits through the end of May. This season, he had one homer and a .143 batting average by April’s end.

And then, just as the David Ortiz career retrospectives were going to press, the big man flipped around, dug his cleats into the dirt again and started bopping home runs all over the yard. Last year, he hit 27 home runs in the season’s final four months. This year, he slugged 10 homers and drove in more than a run per game in May.

So here he is now, as we enter June, just a few home runs off the league lead. Here is his team, playing winning baseball again and back in the pennant race. Indeed, Big Papi is back. And with him, so are the Red Sox.

Once Biggie the crab flipped over in the pail, Katie brought him back to the ocean. No more playing around with this crab. It was time for Biggie to do his thing again, in his own element. And the same went for Sammy and Georgie, too.