D’Angelo Ortiz, son of Big Papi, returns to Red Sox spring training to forge his own path

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Even by the anonymous standards of minor league baseball, No. 44 in Boston Red Sox camp is not a star. He was a late-round draft pick, didn’t get a big signing bonus and remains unranked — even among Red Sox players — by the usual prospect evaluation outlets. He was not invited to Major League spring training, and there’s no guarantee he’ll ever play in the majors.

But when former Red Sox reliever Koji Uehara arrived in Red Sox camp, he posed for pictures with the young man. Hall of Famer Pedro Martínez hugged him. The kid is one of countless 20-year-olds trying to make it in professional baseball, anonymous except for the name on the back of his jersey: Ortiz. As in, D’Angelo Ortiz. Son of Red Sox legend David Ortiz.

When D’Angelo steps out of the minor league clubhouse at the Red Sox spring training facility and turns right, he jogs past a giant picture of his dad. He stops occasionally to talk to Red Sox executives and former players he’s known since he was a kid, but the conversations are brief. D’Angelo has work to do. More groundballs. More batting practice. Zero requests for special treatment.

“The least that I could do is show how serious I take this,” D’Angelo said. “I just want to show that taking a chance on me is not a thing that is because of the name or anything like that.”

His name helped introduce the sport that he loves. It granted him remarkable access to the game at its highest level. But to expect it to do any more than that?

“He knows,” David Ortiz said, “that’s not going to take him anywhere.”

The Red Sox drafted D’Angelo last summer, taking him in the 19th round out of Miami Dade Community College, a baseball powerhouse. D’Angelo was selected 567th overall and signed for a slot allotment of $150,000, roughly three percent of what the Red Sox gave their first-round selection. Ortiz never got into an official game last season, but when the Red Sox opened their complex for optional workouts in the fall, D’Angelo was there. When they opened again in the weeks ahead of spring training, D’Angelo was back.

His reputation among coaches and executives is not of baseball royalty but of a baseball rat. D’Angelo has been ready to work and eager to learn. He’s open to new techniques and happy to try the latest technology. He shies away from little and dismisses even less.

“Someone who’s really trying to tap into his ability to maximize his talent,” farm director Brian Abraham said about D’Angelo. “He understands that there’s a long way to go to become a successful big leaguer. There’s a long way to go to get to the upper levels. But I don’t think he’s not going to get there due to lack of work or lack of wanting to get there.”

The Red Sox say these things on and off the record. There are no snide remarks on the side while publicly singing his praises. The younger Ortiz has been a constant presence, not for photo ops with Hall of Famers, but for ground balls on the back fields and extra swings in the cage. He’s confident, but also well aware that he’s nowhere close to the big leagues. He knows what the big leagues look like, and this isn’t it, but he’s hellbent on getting there.

D’Angelo said he still remembers riding to Fenway Park with his dad, who at that point had won multiple Silver Sluggers, played in multiple All-Star Games, and owned three World Series rings. Cooperstown was a formality. Still, David would drive the streets of Boston, telling his son that each day was another in which even Big Papi would have to prove himself all over again.

In the Red Sox clubhouse, young D’Angelo certainly admired the superstars, but he also took note of the talented players who came and went, unable to stick in the big leagues, and some of his favorite players were utility infielders — Brock Holt and Deven Marrero among them — who couldn’t take anything for granted, put in work every day and still made time for the 10-year-old kid bouncing around the clubhouse. D’Angelo came to appreciate work ethic and to value teamwork and kindness.

“My passion so happens to be baseball,” D’Angelo said. “But if I grew up wanting to be a doctor, I’m sure I would try everything in my power to be the best doctor I could be.”

There is a burden that comes with this particular last name in this particular organization. For D’Angelo, it is a challenge of familiarity. He now answers to a farm director, Abraham, who was once a Red Sox bullpen catcher protecting young D’Angelo from batting practice line drives. D’Angelo agreed to an interview for this story after being asked by a director of media relations, Abby Murphy, who used to babysit for him. Red Sox manager Alex Cora, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow, and coaching staff staple Jason Varitek all played with D’Angelo’s father.

This organization has known D’Angelo as a little boy. Now, he’s reintroducing himself as a baseball player.

“Part of that,” D’Angelo said, “is showing I’m not just a kid anymore who wants to run around and kind of be in the shadow.”

D’Angelo was a regular presence around the Red Sox growing up. (AP Photo / Elise Amendola)

His fellow players notice. D’Angelo’s personality is less bombastic than his father’s, but it’s no less engaging. He talks about a desire to “dominate the training environment,” and people in the organization say he’s already emerged as a leader. His fluency in both Spanish and English makes him a unifier to whom other players gravitate.

One of the Red Sox’s big three prospects, Marcelo Mayer, was in Fort Myers this offseason and met D’Angelo in the lunchroom. The two sat together to eat, and D’Angelo remembers the conversation lasting a half hour. Mayer thinks it might have been three times as long. They talked swings and approach. Mayer, D’Angelo said, offered the kind of insight typical of a 10-year major league veteran. D’Angelo, Mayer said, exuded the passion not of a player who’d seen it all but of one who was eager to learn more.

“He’s one of the most humble, hard-working kids that I’ve been around,” Mayer said. “You would have no clue that his dad is David Ortiz.”

That’s kind of the point, and kind of not. D’Angelo is proud of his dad. He does not shy away from that legacy. Being back at JetBlue Park, he said, is “nostalgic.” He doesn’t wear his father’s No. 34 and wouldn’t have wanted it, but he also wouldn’t have cared if he’d been assigned it. It’s a part of a wonderful history, and D’Angelo appreciates that, but his focus is on the future.

“I did my thing. He’s got to do his,” David said. “He knows the hardest working guy in the room is the one that gets closer and closer and closer to the promised land. There is no shortcut.”

Asked about his father’s own rise from obscurity — David was famously traded and then released before becoming one of the great hitters of his generation — D’Angelo dismissed the comparison, just as he politely dismissed a question about having to exceed expectations as such a late-round pick. None of it is going to matter, he said, if — and when — he performs on the field.

And besides, the way D’Angelo sees it, he can already do things his father could never do. D’Angelo bats and throws right-handed. His primary position is third base. David was a lefty who played exclusively at DH and first base. David couldn’t play the hot corner, even in the low minors. His son is doing that every day. He’s got some speed, range and athleticism.

Point is, the father found one path to the big leagues. The son is forging another. That’s the way it has to be.

“What I will always idolize from him is that in his specific craft, which was hitting, he was able to get the most out of it and become the best player he was able to become,” D’Angelo said. “And whether I’m playing infield or outfield or DH, I want to be able to make the most out of whatever I am.”

There is some ambiguity there — “Whatever I am” — and D’Angelo and the Red Sox are in the process of figuring that out. After all the car rides to the ballpark, all the afternoons in the clubhouse, and all the conversations at home, a passion has been lit and the life lessons have been learned. It’s time for D’Angelo Ortiz to find out what kind of ballplayer he can be.

“I don’t have to stay much to him now,” David said. “Everything he’s doing, he’s doing on his own. I just watch.”

(Top photo: John Shishmanian / USA Today via Imagn Images)