David Ortiz Is Bitching About The Official Scorer Again

David Ortiz hit a game-tying home run in extra innings last night. In the clubhouse after the game, he didn't want to talk about that. He wanted to complain about a seventh-inning ground ball that glanced off the glove of first-baseman Joe Mauer and was ruled an error.

Ortiz was demonstrative on the field, "staring up at the Fenway Park press box, thumbs down, to let the scorer know how he felt." Afterward, he blasted the official scorer for not giving him the hit.

"I thought people were supposed to have your back at home, and it never happens," Ortiz said. "It's always like that. I've been here for more than a decade and the scorekeepers here are always horrible. This is home, man."

This is far from the first time this has happened. In May, in the middle of Yu Darvish's near-no-hitter in Arlington, Ortiz criticized the scoring of a routine pop fly that fell in due to fielder miscommunication.

"They going to have to fix some shit up," Ortiz said. "They have to. I mean, OK, I know I hit a ball that was supposed to be caught, the guy is throwing a no-hitter, we all understand that. But when it comes down to the rules in the game, that's a hit."

(The ruling was later changed.)

In 2011, Ortiz busted into a Terry Francona press conference after a home game, saying "I'm fucking pissed. We need to have a talk" and muttering "fucking scorekeeper always fucking shit up." He wanted Francona to push for a scoring change—Ortiz's potential two-RBI single had been ruled an error.

(The ruling was later changed.)

"I always look like I am the bad guy," Ortiz said yesterday, "but they always end up changing it."

He's not wrong! There's absolutely nothing weird about a player being protective of his statistics, especially since they are correlated with contracts, both directly, through bonuses, and indirectly, through perception of production. Ortiz cares very much— he beat the shit out of a dugout phone after a bad call turned a walk into an out. But Ortiz lacks the tact to pretend he doesn't care, or at least to complain behind closed doors.

He totally should've been awarded a hit yesterday, though.