Projo Sox Blog

David Ortiz shouldn't bother buying any lottery tickets for a while. And stay away from casinos. For that matter, perhaps he should go find a rabbit's foot somewhere and rub it for a minute or two.

After a long period when it seemed his contact was weak, Ortiz has been absolutely pounding the ball lately -- but most of the hits have either been caught at the wall, or rocketed into the gloves of diving first basemen.

"All I can do right now is laugh. Because I ain't going to cry. Laugh, keep on swinging, and wait for the good luck charm to show up. Because there's nothing else I can do," Ortiz said.

In Minnesota, Ortiz hit two balls to the warning track in deep center in one game, but neither had quite the distance to leave the park.

Friday in Toronto, Ortiz slammed a bases-loaded blast that seemed like it would give the Sox a 4-0 lead, but Vernon Wells caught it with his back against the centerfield wall.

"I hit it to the deepest part of the place. That's too bad. I should be smarter than that," Ortiz chuckled.

Later that night, he hit a scorching line drive that first baseman Lyle Overbay snagged out of mid-air. In the first inning tonight, Overbay robbed Ortiz again.

"You can't swing the bat better than that. Just things not happening, you know?" Ortiz said. "When you hit the ball, you've got no control of it. You've got to wait for the ball to go somewhere where nobody's there. They get paid to catch it."

Ortiz is now hitting .189 with one home run and 18 RBI, and has been moved to the sixth spot in the lineup from his traditional third position.

He mulled over the question of whether the non-home run ball Wells caught was actually a deeper hit than his one home run of the season, which came at Fenway. When it comes to things like that, all that matters is the result, he suggested.

"I don't think so," Ortiz said with his trademark smile. Because the homer went out. This one didn't."

 Tags  Boston Red Sox Dan Barbarisi David Ortiz

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