David Ortiz Wants His Fucking RBI

Before last night's game, Ortiz crashed Terry Francona's press conference with some strong language and poor timing. "I'm fucking pissed. We need to have a talk."

What could get the easygoing Ortiz so riled up? A scoring change from Wednesday's game. Ortiz was originally given two RBI for his first-inning single, but after the game Fenway's official scorer changed it to an error, meaning Ortiz only gets credit for plating one of the runners. I'm not sure what he thought Francona could do about this, but his interruption led to one bemused manager, one harried PR lady, and the only time all year Chaz Scoggins will see his name in the paper.

As Ortiz was hustled out of the media room, he carried on: "fucking scorekeeper always fucking shit up." We'll presume that Ortiz simply wanted to preserve Austin Kearns' fielding percentage from an iffy call, rather than being overly concerned with a single RBI in a season which he'll end with more than 100.

Scoggins went on the radio this morning to defend his error call.

"About two innings later, the Cleveland PR guy came over and told me their pitching coach had called him and told him that [Red Sox third base coach Tim] Bogar had put up a stop sign on Youkilis. I told him I didn't see the stop sign and I had looked immediately to see what the coach was doing and he'd waved him home. He said, 'Well, it's on tape somewhere.'

"So, I went back and reviewed the NESN tape. On their replay, sure enough, you could see Bogar throw up his hands to stop Youkilis until the ball was bobbled by Kearns, and then he waved him home. It was only an instant. He never really got his hands up all the way. But clearly, his intent was to stop Youkilis, even though there were two outs, until he saw the bobble.

"At that, I felt I could not give Ortiz two RBIs on that when the intent was to stop Youilis at third."

It sounds like the right call. But it's pretty skeezy that justice was only done after some lobbying from the Indians PR guy. Baseball is politics, and David Ortiz is just lobbying for his interests.

Ortiz bursts into Francona's press conference [CSNNE]