University of Kwazulu-Natal

October 18 2004 David Ortiz S Walk Off Single In 14th Lifts Red Sox

Bonisiwe Shabane
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october 18 2004 david ortiz s walk off single in 14th lifts red sox

The Red Sox had one win in the books, with their extra-inning Game Four win over the Yankees. They weren’t going to be swept in four games. They had fresh energy and a new lease on life, if only for one more day. And they had Pedro Martínez ready to start. And many of them had bought into Kevin Millar’s mantra before Game Four: “Don’t Let Us Win Tonight.” Bill Mueller said, “Coming right back for Game 5 was an advantage for us.

There was no stoppage. The games were running late, and then you turn right back around and do it again. I think that was a plus. You step out for two days and then come back in, some of that momentum could be squandered. Instead, it stayed at the ballpark. … It kept going in our direction.”1

Pedro Martinez was no lock against the Yankees. He had 31 starts against them in his career and the team was 11-20 in those starts. In 2004 he was 1-3 with a 5.29 ERA combining the regular season and postseason. He struck out leadoff batter Derek Jeter on three pitches. He walked Álex Rodríguez, then struck out Gary Sheffield and got Hideki Matsui to fly out to center. Mike Mussina started for the Yankees, and the Red Sox got to him for two runs in the bottom of the first.

Three singles in succession, the third one an RBI single by David Ortiz, produced the first run. A bases-loaded walk to Jason Varitek (batting right-handed against a right-handed pitcher for only the second time in his entire major-league career; he’d been 4-for-49 — .082 — against Mussina) produced the second. Fourteen frames and nearly six hours of do-or-die baseball in America’s oldest and most beloved ballpark. The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees were knotted up 4-4 with two outs and runners on first and second when David Ortiz stepped up to bat. Plunking the ball into shallow center, Johnny Damon raced home, long locks streaming behind him in the cold October air. Game 5 of the 2004 ALCS belonged to Boston.

In 2004, Ortiz was only in his second season of what would be a 14-year Red Sox career, but he’d already made himself indispensable. In the regular season, he’d earned his first All-Star appearance by hitting .301/.380/.603, and he reached 40 home runs for the first time in his then-eight-year career. He’d win his first of seven Silver Slugger awards when the postseason ended. But Ortiz had never homered in a postseason game when he played for the Minnesota Twins in their ill-fated 2002 run. He notched his first October blasts in 2003, homering twice before the Sox fell to Aaron Boone. THE "IDIOTS" REVERSE THE CURSE 2004 ALCS, GAME #5 Big Papi again - he hits a 14th inning walk-off single

October 18, 2004 ... David Ortiz and the Red Sox just beat the Yankees in two extra-inning playoff games on the same calendar day. In perhaps the most thrilling and torturous postseason game in 104 years of Red Sox baseball, the Sox beat the Yankees, 5-4, when the mythic Ortiz singled home Johnny Damon from second base in... It came less than 23 hours after the same Ortiz cracked a walkoff homer to win Game 4 at 1:22 this morning. The Hub has never seen two days of baseball drama like this. The Yankees have to be wondering what hit them the last two nights at Fenway.

New York embarrassed the Red Sox, 19-8, Saturday, taking what looked like an insurmountable lead in the series. But now the Sox have pushed the issue back to the Apple and both teams have depleted bullpens. Tim Wakefield was right in the middle of it. In that last inning, he was on fumes. He pitched the last inning on heart. Game 5 featured 35 players, including 14 pitchers.

Wakefield, the man who was on the mound when the Yankees broke the Sox' hearts in 2003, dazzled New York with three innings of one-hit, shutout, shout-out relief. The winning rally started when the slumping Damon (2 for 24) drew a one-out walk off Esteban Loaiza in the bottom of the 14th. With two outs, Manny Ramirez (no RBIs in 21 at-bats) walked to push Damon to second. Enter "Papi," who can lay claim to being the most clutch performer in Sox history. He already has 9 RBIs in five games. He worked the count to 2-and-2, then started fouling off pitches.

On the 10th pitch from Loaiza, Ortiz dumped a single into center and again there was bedlam on the Fenway lawn. After avoiding the sweep in Game 4, all I cared about was sending the series back to New York. At least make it a respectable run before being eliminated. Please, just win this game. I was only 13-years-old during the 2004 season, but negativity was already pumping through my veins as a sports fan. I grew up around people who had seen little besides failure in their lives, and lived through some of that myself in 2003.

Because of this, I had already come to grips with the fact that the Red Sox were going to lose this series. There was no way they could come back from a 3-0 deficit, and I wasn’t about to get my hopes up believing otherwise. Still, they needed to win this game and make it a respectable series. They’d already avoided the sweep, and now they had to avoid the gentleman’s sweep. Just win this game, send it back to New York and lose there. Losing a series in six games is much more bearable than losing in four or five.

I was watching the game with my brother and my parents like every other game, and that was all I could think. Just please don’t lose this one. It’s easy to forget now, but at the time there was a good chance we were about the see Pedro Martinez wearing a Red Sox uniform for the final time. He was about to become a free agent, and the odds of the team going far enough to give him another start were slim at best. Luckily, he got off to a vintage start, striking out Derek Jeter on three pitches. It was actually an all-around good first inning for the hometown team, a startling change of pace in the series.

After showing no signs of early life in the first four games - they were outscored 6-0 in the first inning in games one through four - they shot off to a 2-0 lead... It served as a nice reminder that happiness for the Red Sox to that point was futile and constantly slipping away. We just weren’t allowed to be happy for too long at a time, and Bernie Williams let us know when he hit the first pitch of the second inning into the seats, cutting the... Things would stay this way for the next few innings, with each team putting up minor threats, but nothing coming of it. That is, until the sixth. This was the inning where I truly lost my mind.

I’m not sure I was ever so sure the Red Sox would never win a World Series as I was during this inning. Pedro managed to get to this point without too much struggle, but at this stage of his career, he was approaching the time when the team had to be careful with him, especially in... The inning started with an infield single from Jorge Posada. Seriously, an infield single from JORGE POSADA. This shit could only happen to the Red Sox. After giving up a base hit to Ruben Sierra and hitting Miguel Cairo, it was clear that Martinez was losing it quickly, and yet Boston’s bullpen was less active than god damn sloth.

Derek Jeter came up to the plate, and I think we all knew what was about to happen. Send this article to your social connections. Send this article to your social connections. The career of David Ortiz is over, but The Legend of Big Papi will continue to loom large in Boston and beyond. The recently retired Red Sox slugger may not have added the phrase “walk-off” to the baseball vernacular, but his bat gave people plenty of reason to use the term throughout a 20-year career. With his playing days behind him, there are few better ways to appreciate Ortiz’s legacy than to recall his litany of walk-off heroics.

He had 23 walk-off hits in his career, including three in the postseason and three with the Twins before joining the Red Sox. The first walk-off hit of David Ortiz’s career occurred on April 4, 2000, when he was a member of the Twins. Ortiz had had cups of coffee with Minnesota in 1997, 1998 and 1999; but this is the year that truly began his MLB career. In the second game of the season, Minnesota was trailing the Rays, 5-4, entering the ninth inning. The score was tied 5-5 when Ortiz came to the plate with two down. His single to center off Roberto Hernandez drove home Christian Guzman and the Twins won, 6-5.

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