BOSTON -- The man who has inspired a seemingly infinite swath of prose over the last decade and a half on Yawkey Way, the Boston Red Sox's most jovial and most quotable player, the one with a smile as prodigious as his belly laughs, had just six words to say after rewriting history yet again.
“Just say I’m a bad m-----f-----,” David Ortiz hollered as he brushed off a throng of reporters inside the clubhouse, rushing off to a family engagement.
No problem, David. As one of the most clutch -- and most popular -- hitters in Red Sox history takes his farewell tour this season, Ortiz will be greeted at many a visiting park with various gifts, going-away presents for a remarkable storybook career, a tradition popularized by one of the most distinguished adversaries during his time in Boston, Derek Jeter.