As the Toronto Star reports, the Red Sox slugger took the plate in the seventh inning after teammate Shane Victorino homered to bring the score to 7-2 for the Red Sox.
Orioles pitcher Jairo Acencio dealt three balls to Ortiz, but umpire Tim Timmons called the ensuing high fastball a strike. Ortiz was furious, and ended up striking out.
Ortiz then yelled at Timmons and was immediately ejected from the game. When Ortiz entered the dugout, he smashed two dugout phones with his baseball bat. He then charged back onto the field, where he was restrained by manager John Farrell and pitching coach Torey Lovullo. Teammate Dustin Pedroia finally got “Big Papi” under control.
Ortiz apparently tries to demonstrate by a hand motion that the ball was thrown too high to be a strike. That probably wasn’t enough to convince Pedroia, who had to shield himself to avoid being hit by the shattered plastic of the dugout phones.
Saturday’s game was a good one for Stephen Drew, who recently came off the disabled list. He homered twice in the game for a total of five RBIs, tying his career high.
The Red Sox beat the Orioles again 5-0 on Sunday, and Ortiz was apparently booed every time he went up to the plate by the Camden Yard crowd. As John Farrell put it: “After he took it out on the phone last night, he took it out on the baseball today.”
“I’m past it,” Ortiz told the Boston Globe. “We’re all past it now. It’s a new day. We had to go out and win this game against this team because they had given us so much trouble. We accomplished that. Now we have to face David Price again and that’s our next challenge.”
Major League Baseball is still reviewing the incident.
