Barstool Sports

OAKLAND – Next offseason is going to be different. David Ortiz is certain about that. No more arbitration process. No more one-year deal. And possibly no more Boston Red Sox. The longtime Boston favorite, who at 36 is enjoying an eighth All-Star season, remains bitter about the club’s decision to reject his request for a two-year contract last offseason and instead offered him arbitration, a process he called “humiliating” and “embarrassing.” The sides agreed on a one-year, $14.575 million deal in February, hours before an arbitration hearing. About 2½ hours before belting the 400th home run of his career Wednesday in a 3-2 loss to the Oakland Athletics, Ortiz told USA TODAY Sports in an extended Spanish-language interview that he’d like to stay in Boston but not if he was treated the way he was last offseason. “If you go crazy and give contracts to whoever comes along despite not knowing how they’re going to do, then you don’t give me my due consideration, even though I do my thing every year, fuck that,” said Ortiz, the Red Sox lone All-Star representative. “I’m going to be open to anything. My mentality is not going to be, ‘I like it here.’ It’s going to be, ‘Bring it to the table, and we’ll see what happens.’ “

This is the kind of thing that used to bother the hell out of me, but now I’ve come full circle on it.  I’ve learned to just accept it as the price of poker when it comes to dealing with Ortiz.  He’s become the irascible old coot who won medals in the war and he’s going to make damned sure everybody knows how much we owe him.  And bitching about his contract is his version of saying kids today have no respect and it’s too cold in this house and ice cream used to cost a nickel. Or yelling at clouds.  It’s just something you have to put up with to have him around.  The best way to handle it is to just roll your eyes behind his back and ignore it.  Besides, even though he’s wrong to agree to a deal and then piss and moan about it 6 months later (if he could’ve taken a better offer elsewhere he would have), he’s right about the bad free agent signings.  These deals don’t happen in a vacuum.  When teams throw a bunch of money at guys they shouldn’t be shocked that it affects everyone else and causes all sorts of bad blood.  It’s human nature.

And sure, you could argue Ortiz isn’t running the team and he needs to take his $14 million and STFU.  But I’ve come around on that too.  The Red Sox themselves created this monster.  This Papenstein.  With their ad campaigns and “Best Clutch Hitter” plaques and free cars and boat rides and headphones and $2 million raises at the age of 37.  So they have no right to be shocked when he walks around with a sense of entitlement.  I hate to sound like everything comes back to the Patriots, but for the life of you can you imagine Vince Wilfork busting in on a Belichick press conference the way Papi did to Francona last year to bitch about having a sack taken away?  The Sox tolerate that stuff, so it’s no surprise they get more of it.  Even when the club is trying to claw their way into the pennant race.  The Midseason Anti-Ownership Spanish Language Interview Contract Rant is a time honored tradition with this team that Pedro started and the torch has been passed now to Ortiz.  Like I said, it’s price of doing business.  And if it bothers you, you haven’t been paying attention all this time.  @JerryThornton1