ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) – Sometimes, friendships have to take a back seat – especially during playoff season.
Former teammates Torii Hunter and David Ortiz have been buddies for years and they’ve seen a lot of each other lately, but it’s from opposite sides of the AL playoff series between the Los Angeles Angels and Boston Red Sox.
The pair played in Minnesota for five-plus seasons, including 2002, when the Twins lost the AL championship series to the Angels on Adam Kennedy’s three home runs in the clinching game. Ortiz has since gone on to win two World Series rings. Hunter, playing in the postseason for the fifth time, is trying to get his first ring at the expense of his former roommate.
Hunter, a seven-time Gold Glove center fielder, is convinced he would have at least one already had Ortiz remained in Minnesota instead of signing a one-year, $1.25 million contract with the Red Sox following the ’02 season.
, but at the time, Red Sox rookie general manager Theo Epstein told reporters that Ortiz “would get a chance to compete” for the everyday first base job – with Jeremy Giambi – after the club decided not to keep Brian Daubach and Tony Clark.
“Once the Twins got rid of David in 2002,” Hunter said, “I actually called the general manager, Terry Ryan, and told him, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ He told me, ‘Matthew LeCroy was a better hitter than David Ortiz.’ I told him, ‘You’re wrong. David Ortiz is the best hitter on our team.’ And two years later, look – he got a ring.”
Hunter, who left the Twins as a free agent last November to sign a five-year, $90 million contract with the Angels, certainly knew what he was talking about.
LeCroy batted .287 with in 2003 with 99 hits, 17 homers and 64 RBIs – his best numbers in any of his eight big league seasons. He signed a minor league contract with Oakland in February, which didn’t pan out, and spent this season with the Lancaster Barnstormers of the independent Atlantic League.
Ortiz, meanwhile, is a five-time All-Star who has helped lead the Red Sox to the postseason five times – four of them as a wild card. The Red Sox have been the AL’s wild card representative six times altogether, more than any team since the format was instituted in 1995.
I don’t you ever think about that because everybody’s on the same page with a chance to get into the final four – whether you’re a wild card or a division winner. The main thing is to be a part of it.”
This division series has given Ortiz and Hunter some time to reminisce. The Red Sox DH enjoyed the years he and Hunter spent together in the Metrodome while they were just starting to establish themselves as major league stars.
“He’s the best, man. I don’t think you can get no better than that,” Ortiz said. “That’s my boy right there. We go way back. Torii’s a sweet person. He has the best personality a player can ever have. He’s the kind of guy who gets along with everybody.”
Hunter had a difficult childhood and was raised by his grandmother, Edna Cobbs, who had a brain aneurism in July. He left the Angels for a few days to visit her in Pine Bluff, Ark. She passed away at age 80 on the day he was expected to rejoin the team for the opener of a three-game weekend series at Baltimore. But Hunter was back at Camden Yards the next day – going 3-for-3 with two homers and five RBIs in an 11-6 win.
Two nights later, Hunter hit a three-run homer at Boston against Daisuke Matsuzaka to help fuel a 7-5 victory. The following Friday, he hit an RBI single in the ninth against Mariano Rivera in a 1-0 win at Yankee Stadium.
nights later in Anaheim he had two hits, including a ninth-inning double, and scored the winning run against the Orioles on a bases-loaded walk to Chone Figgins.
“You’ve got your tough moments in life, but he’s pretty good at knowing how to deal with it and going on from there,” Ortiz said. “The good thing about having a tough time growing up is that whenever you get to the point that it’s turned around, you forget about those days and it makes you a better human being.”
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