The generally jovial David "Big Papi" Ortiz was not so cuddly Sunday during Boston's game against the Orioles in Baltimore, when a blown call led the slugger to decimate a Red Sox bullpen phone in the dugout.
The drama began on a 3-0 pitch to Ortiz from Orioles reliever Jairo Ascencio that sailed high and should have been ball four. Making things more frustrating, Ortiz had called time and stepped out of the batters box, but apparently the home plate umpire, Tim Timmons, did not grant it.
He complained to Timmons, then grew angrier as the next pitch, another borderline call, was ruled a strike as well. The next pitch from Ascencio was a pitch in the dirt that a flustered Ortiz swung and missed at. "I don't know what to do," Ortiz said. "I swung at a pitch that was on the ground."
Frustration boiling over, Ortiz skulked back to the dugout where he battered the phone on the wall with his bat as second baseman Dustin Pedroia attempted to cool him off to no avail. That's when Big Papi was tossed from the game by Timmons, who had had enough.
"He's the biggest part of our lineup," Pedroia said. "We can't lose David for one game. I was trying to get him calm. I'm sure it was pretty funny, the smallest guy out there taking on the biggest guy."
Ortiz said the calls themselves, while bad, didn't irk him as much as Timmons inability to acknowledge a mistake.
"The funny thing is, he wants to act like it was the right call," Ortiz said. "I don't play that. I don't pitch. I don't play defense. I hit. You're not going to take my at-bats away from me, period."
Ortiz claimed Timmons admitted missing a call to Red Sox starter Ryan Dempster, and was just looking for the same courtesy.
"That was horrible," he said. "People always focus on when we snap. We're not snapping every day out there. There's a reason why you snap, you know what I'm saying? You always look like the bad guy. I'm not a bad guy. I'm trying to do my job. You don't take my at-bat away from me like that."
"When I'm walking away, I'm telling him he was acting like he was right about the call. No, he wasn't. He wasn't right. Don't be giving me that BS. If you miss it, tell me you missed it and I'll walk away. I don't have a problem with that. You're not perfect. You're human, you know what I'm saying. But don't act like you made the right call. It was ball four."
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