David Ortiz - My Sportsman of the Year

It was a year in which many athletes, particularly older athletes, came back from injuries and once again dominated their respective sports. Serena, for example, regained her old form, reasserted her dominance, and won two majors. Last summer, she seemed almost unbeatable. Peyton too had a spectacular year, breaking almost every single season passing record, and leading his Broncos to the number one seed in the AFC. He is assured of playing at home in Denver throughout the AFC playoffs, but then again, neither Peyton nor the Broncos have yet to win a playoff game this year, let alone the Super Bowl.  

LeBron succeeded, not only in dominating his sport individually, but also in leading the Heat to another championship, and in the end left everyone wondering whether another NBA dynasty had begun its rule over the league – perhaps one to match the Bulls’ dominance throughout the 1990s.

But for my money, no one accomplished more in 2013 than David Ortiz, Big Papi. It’s hard to recall that as the season opened, no one was sure that Papi’s body would hold up, that his Achilles injury was fully healed, and that even if healed, he could catch up with fastballs as he once did. His numbers, even when healthy, seemed to be in decline. But before anyone could answer those questions, the Patriots Day bombings thrust Papi into a new role as the spiritual leader of RedSox Nation. It was the Saturday following the bombings, and the Sox returned to Fenway for the first time. After a long ceremony honoring the first responders, and the victims, and the many law enforcement personnel who had, only the day before captured the younger maniac responsible for terrorizing the city, Papi electrified the crowd with his profane rallying cry. Boston Strong became the motto, not only for healing the city of Boston, but for inspiring the Sox throughout the long summer season. 

But Ortiz is, after all, an athlete, and he gets paid, not to be an inspiration speaker, but to play baseball. And that he did, all season long, putting up numbers that made everyone forget the physical struggles he had faced over the prior couple years. In the end, he hit thirty home runs, and drove in more than a hundred, and along the way, set some career records for designated hitters. But much more importantly, he led his team back to the World Series, in itself a remarkable achievement after the disastrous 2012 season. He might not have dominated either the ALDS, or the ALCS, but there is no arguing that his Game Two grand slam in the ALCS saved Boston’s post-season, which at that moment was teetering on the edge of the abyss – looking at an 0-2 deficit, and facing Verlander in Game Three in Detroit. 

That, however, was only the prelude. Ortiz then single handedly dominated the World Series in a way we had not seen in a long time – perhaps since the time of Koufax or Gibson. Everyone knows the numbers by now – how he batted .688, and set some kind of record for consecutive on-base at bats. But what was even more remarkable was how he reprised his April role as the team’s inspirational leader: in Game Four, when the Sox trailed the Cardinals two games to one, and seemed flat and lifeless, he gathered his teammates in the dugout, and challenged them to play the game the way they knew how. Soon thereafter Gomes hit a three-run homer, and the Sox took Game Four. And then they proceeded to sweep the Cardinals for the rest of the series, winning it all in Fenway for the first time in almost a century. 

So then tell me: who had a bigger year than the Big Papi? I think he deserved Sportsman of the Year by acclamation, but then again, I don’t get a vote. And the truth is, I’d much rather that Papi got his ring, and the Sox got to hang another banner on Yawkey Way. The one popularity contest he won – the vote for World Series MVP – typically denotes that the winner wears a ring. And in the end, what else really matters?