David J. Phillip/Associated Press
David Ortiz, left, with his former teammate Pedro Martinez for a ceremonial pitch before Thursday's game. Ortiz later hit his 17th postseason homer.
BOSTON — They are all scattered now, the legends of the fall of 2004. All except David Ortiz, who welcomed back seven of his former teammates before Game 2 of another World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals on Thursday at Fenway Park. Then he reprised what he did that October.
"This is what you get prepared for all year round," Ortiz said, hours later, after another World Series home run. "I don't play for July. I play for this, right now."
Ortiz was trying to join Scott Brosius of the 1998-2000 Yankees as the only player to play for the winning team in each of his first 10 World Series games. The homer was his 17th in the postseason, and with two hits, Ortiz raised his career World Series average to .382. But he also endured something the 2004 gang never did: a World Series loss.
The Cardinals used two walks, two singles, two steals and two errors to rally past the Red Sox, 4-2, and send the series to Busch Stadium even at one game apiece. With no designated hitter in the National League park, Ortiz will bring his first baseman's glove. Expect Mike Napoli, who also plays only one defensive position, to be on the bench, with Ortiz in the field.
"It's likely that, Game 3, he'll be at first base at this point, just a quick look at it," Manager John Farrell said after Thursday's game. "And how we go from there, we'll go day to day. We're going to lose one of the middle-of-the-order bats, and that's understood going in. But David's in a pretty good place offensively right now."
Ortiz is 4 for 6 in the World Series, with five runs batted in, and he would have had three more if Carlos Beltran had not pulled back a grand slam with a catch at the wall in Game 1. Ortiz is the first player in seven years to homer in the first two games of the World Series.
The last to do it was Craig Monroe of the Detroit Tigers in 2006, also against the Cardinals. The Tigers split the first two games of that World Series, then lost three straight in St. Louis. The Red Sox cannot fathom such an outcome, even after a messy inning led to their demise in Game 2.
"It's baseball; things are going to happen," shortstop Stephen Drew said. "This team is really good at not dwelling on it, and moving past it."
No team did that as stylishly as the 2004 Red Sox, the only team to overcome a 3-0 deficit and win a best-of-seven series. By the time those Red Sox finished off the Yankees in the American League Championship Series, the Cardinals had no chance.
One by one on Thursday, they marched to the emerald infield for a ceremony: Jason Varitek, Keith Foulke, Mike Timlin, Kevin Millar, Trot Nixon, Derek Lowe and Pedro Martinez, a seven-man first-pitch firing squad. Ortiz delivered their baseballs from a small bucket, flipping one to each of his former teammates as he worked the line, like a jolly Easter bunny giving out eggs.
Ortiz is not the cuddly caricature he is so often made out to be. He can be profane and prone to violent outbursts, as a telephone in the Camden Yards dugout can attest. He never really explained his positive test for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003, when the results were supposed to be anonymous.
But he gets a pass for all of it here, for helping produce two championships and for embodying the spirit of the city in a defiant speech at Fenway when baseball returned after the marathon bombings in April. The fans here turn to Ortiz, and so often, he delivers.
He did it in Game 2 with one out in the sixth inning, connecting on a full-count changeup from Michael Wacha and lifting it over the left-field wall. Wacha had entered the at-bat with a shutout and 97 pitches. He finished it trailing, 2-1, with his pitch count up to 103.
"You always say you don't want the best player to beat you, and it seems like they're pitching around him," Boston's Jonny Gomes said. "But it just takes one strike for him, and today he shot one the other way over the Green Monster."
With one swing, Ortiz did more damage to Wacha than all other hitters had done to him in the last month. Before the homer, Wacha had thrown 35 innings across his last five starts, one in the regular season and four in October, allowing one earned run for a 0.26 earned run average.
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