David Ortiz’s achievements during his 14 history-altering-in-all-the-good-ways seasons with the Red Sox are accessed easily enough in the highlight reels and box scores tucked away in our minds. (YouTube and Baseball-Reference.com are also helpful, yes.)
So it came as something of a surprise Tuesday when I saw a statistic during MLB Network’s buildup to the announcement of the Cooperstown class of 2022 that didn’t seem quite right, yet was.
The stat: In his 20-year career, the first six spent miscast with the small-ball Minnesota Twins, Ortiz hit 11 regular-season walk-off home runs, and two more in the postseason.