Red Sox embrace the future by signing Ortiz

The move barely made a ripple in the baseball news pond on Jan. 22, 2003, when the Boston Red Sox signed David Ortiz to a one-year deal worth $1.25 million.

Eight months later, Ortiz was a budding superstar who helped the Red Sox advance to the American League Championship Series. And the best was yet to come.

The Minnesota Twins had decided to non-tender Ortiz – who was eligible for salary arbitration – after a 2002 season that saw him hit 20 home runs and drive in 75 runs in 125 games. The Red Sox brought Ortiz to Boston with the expectation that he could provide protection for cleanup hitter Manny Ramírez in the team’s lineup. Ortiz was coming off a winter ball season where he was named Most Valuable Player of the Caribbean World Series.

“I was happy to be in the Twins’ organization,” Ortiz told the Naples (Fla.) Daily News in the spring of 2003 when rumors swirled that he clashed with Twins manager Tom Kelly. “The man (Kelly) was trying to get us to play the game the right way, as young players, (and) as young players, you don’t get the message right away.”

Ortiz alternated between first base and DH for much of the first month of the 2003 season and began to find his swing in June when he settled into the No. 5 spot in the batting order – right behind Ramírez – as the team’s designated hitter. He finished the season with a .288 batting average, 31 home runs and 101 RBI in 128 games, helping Boston capture the American League Wild Card.

In the postseason, Ortiz batted just .095 (2-for-21) in the ALDS vs. Oakland but the Red Sox won in five games to advance. But in the ALCS vs. the Yankees, Ortiz gave a glimpse of the future with two homers and six RBI, including a home run off David Wells in the eighth inning of Game 7 that gave the Red Sox a seemingly comfortable 5-2 lead.

New York would famously rally to win that game in 11 innings, but Ortiz would power the Red Sox to the World Series in 2004 with an MVP performance in the ALCS vs. the Yankees. Boston would go on to defeat St. Louis in the World Series that year to end the Red Sox’s 86-year championship drought.

In so many ways, that championship began in January of 2003 when Ortiz came to Boston.

“(The Twins) gave me a chance to win,” said Ortiz in the spring of 2003 after he got his first postseason experience with Minnesota in the ALDS and ALCS in 2002. “Now, I’m going to try to do it here with the Red Sox.”

Ortiz played 14 seasons for the Red Sox, finishing his career with 541 home runs, 1,768 RBI and three World Series rings. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2022.

Craig Muder is the director of communications for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum