David Ortiz Needs to Respect What Comes with Being a Boston Red Sox Star

On Tuesday, David Ortiz said some vintage Big Papi stuff, and he did so very much in defense of his teammates and the Boston Red Sox organization as a whole.

Responding to a report from ESPN's Buster Olney that the Red Sox have a "toxic" clubhouse, Ortiz went to bat for the Red Sox, making it clear that things aren't nearly as bad as the very word "toxic" would have people believe.

Via ESPNBoston.com:

"

First of all, this is the Red Sox right here. This ain't no (expletive) organization that players just walk in for the first day and start doing whatever the (expletive) they want. Players, when they walk into this clubhouse, they look around and they want to adjust themselves to what is going on here, and that's how things are in this clubhouse.

"

Yeah. You tell 'em, Papi. And who runs Boston's clubhouse?

"

I run this (expletive) clubhouse right here. This clubhouse has no problem. The last problem this clubhouse had was last year when everything came down to what it was in (September), but since then everybody's cool and everybody's trying their best to win games.

"

Boom. No need to worry, Red Sox Nation. Papi's in charge, and nobody even thinks about crossing him.

Just like that, it seemed like the "toxic" report had effectively been taken out behind the barn and done away with. Though he had to get all riled up to do it, Ortiz calmed things down.

...And then he went and stirred things back up again on Thursday.

You've heard his comments by now. Ortiz went from being rowdy on Tuesday to being sullen on Thursday, and he sounded none too enthused about being a part of the team that he had just defended just a couple days earlier.

Via the Boston Herald:

"

I’m just tired of dealing with the drama here. It seems like everything that goes on around here is like one of those Congress decisions that will affect the whole nation. It ain’t like that, man. This is baseball. We’re supposed to have fun to have our performance out there at the highest level.

"

Ortiz's gripe was with the media, which has been out to get the Red Sox ever since the final month of the 2011 season. He just wants to play ball and have fun, and the knights of the keyboard, as Ted Williams once called them, aren't making it easy to do the latter.

His mistake was making it sound like his gripe with the media was actually a gripe with the team itself.

“Not really," said Ortiz when he was asked if he's having fun this season. "Too much (bad stuff), man. Too much (bad stuff).”

When a dude who's hitting .310 with 18 home runs and an OPS up over 1.000 says he's not having fun, you know he means it.

And if he's not having fun, well, shoot, the implication is that the rest of the team is having even less fun than he is. In less than 48 hours, he went from being a righteous defender to being more of a whistle-blower.

It would be one thing if we were talking about a young rookie (i.e. Will Middlebrooks) who's unaccustomed to the pressure of playing ball in Boston, but we're talking about a guy who has been a star with the Red Sox for close to a decade at this point. Ortiz should know how to handle the ever-ravenous Boston media, not to mention the national media.

And indeed, we know for a fact that Ortiz does know how to handle the media. He's demonstrated his skills in that department many times over the years, including on Tuesday when he effectively stood up in front of the microphones and said, "I'm a bad mother[you-know-what] and I run this [thing]. We're cool."

So what the heck happened on Thursday that made him shrink in the spotlight and admit that he's having a crappy time in Boston this season?

Only he knows. It's possible that he was simply in a bad mood, a notion floated by Jerry Remy and Don Orsillo during NESN's broadcast of the Red Sox's 6-5 win over the Miami Marlins on Thursday night.

He certainly sounded like a dude in a bad mood. If so, that's fine. He's entitled. It's a long season, and it hasn't been an easy one for the Red Sox for the most part. He's also certainly not the first Red Sox star to be a little too candid with the media with a tough season going on in the background.

Where Ortiz crossed the line was the second he made this comment:

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It’s becoming the (crap)-hole it used to be. Playing here used to be so much fun. Now, every day is something new, not related to baseball. People need to leave us alone, play ball and do what we know how to do. The only thing we can control is play ball. (The media) control the microphones, the papers, everything.

"

He should have chosen his words a lot more carefully with this one. Because of all the players in Boston's clubhouse, Ortiz is the one guy who should know that you can't give the Boston media a comment like this and expect them to treat it like it's no big deal.

It was bad enough that the media already viewed Boston's clubhouse as a place where players scarf down chicken and guzzle beer in between innings, all while hating Bobby Valentine's guts. What Ortiz did with his "(crap)-hole" remark was play into that perception. So to speak, the face that the media has put on Boston's clubhouse now has a name.

Have Ortiz's comments been taken out of context? They have indeed, but he has nobody but himself to blame for that. He tried to walk a fine line between saying that the media sucks and saying that playing in Boston sucks, and he strayed too far into the latter territory. That's one of the worst things a Red Sox player, especially a star player, can possibly do.

As is usually the case whenever a firestorm like this gets started, it would have been better if Ortiz hadn't said anything at all. He could have declined to speak to the press in the first place or just given them generic answers that would have been quickly printed and quickly forgotten.

Instead, the same guy who boasted about running Boston's clubhouse not two days earlier stood up and threw that same clubhouse under the bus. He was strong-willed one day, and weak-willed the next.

You've gotta do better than that, Big Papi. And you have to do better than that a) exactly because you're Big Papi and b) because Boston always has been Boston, still is Boston, and always will be Boston. The stars of the Boston Red Sox are always under a microscope.

Most of the time, Ortiz handles himself just fine in the spotlight. To that end, his actions on Thursday are an anomaly.

It's too late now. The damage is done. All Ortiz can do now is make sure he doesn't have a similar slip-up again this season.

Above all, he needs to keep peddling the notion that the Red Sox aren't a crap organization. If the team's biggest and brightest star can't remain steadfast in that belief, people will have no choice but to believe that the Red Sox are exactly what the newspapers say they are.

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