David Ortiz is in the Hall of Fame of my heart, dammit

At this time next year, David Ortiz will be an ex-player. He’ll have retired and moved on, even if we haven’t. He will flip his bat at card shows for a small fee, and there will be tributes.

Oh, man. It will be April by the time you’re tired of the tributes.

Every visiting ballpark. Every telecast. However you consume your baseball highlights. When he wins a game. When he hits a dinger. When he hits a dinger to win a game. Ortiz Ortiz Ortiz. Ceremonies after ceremonies.

Jim Pohlad: We would like to present you this rocking chair, made out of broken dreams and regret.

Terry Ryan: It’s made out of bats.

Jim Pohlad: We would like to present you this rocking chair, made out of bats.

And there will be articles. Like this one. But more of them. Scores and scores of them, examining his legacy. They will be hyperbolic, and they will get increasingly so the closer it gets to October. If the Red Sox actually make the postseason? Each of us will be assigned an intern who will follow us around all day, saying nothing but “David Ortiz,” over and over again.

These articles will roughly fall into one of two formats.

In the beginning there was nothing but Ortiz, and he smiled and gave the streets of Boston their names. He created each neighborhood by hitting a baseball into the stars and scraping up the stardust that fell. Then he flipped his bat into the sun, and when it fell from the sky, he shaped it into Fenway Park.

“This will be the center of the universe,” he said, as he laughed gregariously and created all the animals and plants.

Here’s a nice fact: Did you know there are 69 different hitters not in the Hall of Fame who have a higher career WAR than David Ortiz? Dozens and dozens of hitters.

Scott Rolen isn’t getting into the Hall, and he might drop off the first ballot. Keith Hernandez could hit, and he played a brilliant first base. Lou Whitaker could hit, and he played a brilliant *second* base. Andruw Jones won’t get elected, and neither will Jim Edmonds. Do you realize how much more valuable they were?

/*hands shaking*

Sal Bando. Darrell Evans. John Olerud. Will Clark. Jack Clark. Chet Lemon.

/*sits down, visibly upset*

Bobby Bonds. Bob Johnson. Bob Elliot. Bobby Abreu. Bobby Grich. THERE ARE LITERALLY FIVE DIFFERENT BOBS WHO WON’T GET INTO THE HALL OF FAME, EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE MORE VALUABLE THAN DAVID ORTIZ ACCORDING TO WAR.

/*vomits liquid wRC+ into trashcan*

Look at what you’ve done.

As you might have guessed, I’m caught in the middle. I’m a fan of baseball’s story, its winding lyricism. I’m a fan of legends and emotion. I’m a fan of being a fan. But I’m also a fan of statistics and logic. Tangible evidence and reasoned opinions. Ortiz and the Hall of Fame is right at the intersection of analysis and personal experience.

Except when I write “caught in the middle,” I mean more “understanding of both sides, but clearly more interested in what one side has to say.”

While the first sample article poked fun at the ability of Red Sox fans to be absurdly hyperbolic about Ortiz, that doesn’t mean I get tired of listening to what he means to them. He arrived in a bonnet on their doorstep, and he was perfect. He wasn’t the perfect player, and he couldn’t rack up the WAR like hitters who took the field, but he was the perfect player for the Red Sox for the most important stretch of that franchise’s history. More than that, he became a recognizable face of baseball -- one of the few worth bringing up as a superstar that transcends the niche feel of the sport.

When fans talk about what Ortiz meant, their eyes light up and they start gushing about the hope he gave them in 2004, the power of one well-placed f-bomb after the Boston Marathon bombing, the sight of Torii Hunter, end over end, with a policeman’s arms outstretched. It’s the moments in between, when he was doing the boring things like helping the Red Sox win far more regular season games than they would have without him.

When the cynics refute that, they’re saying, this number means more than that. This, right here, this back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that it doesn’t matter how popular or memorable or beloved he was. Look at this number.

The romance wins that head-to-head battle. And I like numbers. Love them, even. You can use those numbers to shut me up when I’m talking about Will Clark in the Hall. I’ll come strong with the romance, but I think the numbers are pretty compelling. Didn’t stay healthy enough, didn’t have a long enough peak, et cetera. What Clark meant to me and the Giants is compelling, but the numbers take it.

Ortiz, though, is on a very, very, very short list of players who defined a World Series-winning team for over a decade. And it’s not like his numbers were abysmal. Goodness, no. The hits he takes from stats like WAR have to do with him being a DH, which I get, but the positional adjustment is extreme enough to make me skeptical. Since Ortiz came into the league, he’s been a solidly above average hitter in every season, with 10 seasons with an adjusted OPS over 120. No DH since then has had more than three.

That’s because it’s freaking hard to find a good DH. DHs kind of suck. The best ones come in, rake for a few years, then fade away. Travis Hafner was a god until he wasn’t. Jack Cust, Randall Simon, Jason Kubel ... they all had their moments in the sun. Then they float away, and their teams had to find a new one. Since Ortiz came into the league, he’s accounted for almost a third of the above-average seasons from every DH who qualified for the batting title. The positional adjustment is necessary, but it overstates just how easy it is to find good help at DH these days.

So I’ll roll my eyes at the tributes when they get to be too much, too loud and too often, just like I did with Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, but I’ll also embrace them. David Ortiz is a marvel. He is the human representation of Good-Ass Timing, arriving for the Red Sox after nearly a century of desperately needing him. And considering that baseball is basically an exercise in Good-Ass Timing, Ortiz is basically baseball by extension.

You know what Ortiz has done? He’s turned me into a Jack Morris voter. Should have been there, man. Should have been there. And like I wrote with Morris, I’m okay with those arguments.

Here’s how I would define the purpose of the Hall of Fame: It’s a museum that tells the story of baseball. And makes wheelbarrows of money. But mostly the first part. And with each player inducted, that’s another chapter that reads “Pay special attention to this player. He was important. He was synonymous with baseball when he played.”

...

But I also would have graciously acknowledged that if 75% of the voters didn’t feel that way (about a specific player), I was seeing something that others didn’t.

That 75 percent isn’t a small majority. It isn’t a plurality. It’s a supermajority of writers who all agree that player is a necessary part of baseball lore. Even considering the steroid weirdness that voters latch onto, I’m pretty sure Ortiz will get that supermajority.

And I can’t imagine being cynical about that. He’s David Ortiz, man. David Ortiz. I miss him already.