The Big Papi Show: Inside David Ortiz’s Transition from Red Sox Hero to World Series Analyst
October 31, 2017
Just one year ago, David Ortiz retired as one of the most beloved athletes of all-time. Now, he’s learning how to perfect his broadcasting with the help of an old rival.
David Ortiz dropped the most beloved public F-bomb of all time, so he is clearly a gifted orator. Still, the king of the postseason walk-off found himself feeling something he wasn’t accustomed to after Fox Sports hired him to sit in the center chair behind its pre- and post-game desk for this year’s baseball playoffs: nerves. Galvanizing his traumatized home town was one thing. “This is our f—— city!” he told Fenway Park on April 20, 2013, five days after the Boston Marathon bombings, drawing praise from even the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Formulating coherent and analytical—and, ideally, non-profane—soundbites in front of 19 million viewers, in his second language, was an entirely new challenge.
His broadcasting career got off to an inauspicious start. “I’m lost, man! I’m lost!” he shouted on his first day of work as he wandered near the loading docks of Fox’s expansive studios in Los Angeles, until Bardia Shah-Rais, Fox Sports’s coordinating producer, found him. Things quickly improved. “We told him, ‘Be yourself,’” says Shah-Rais. “’Don’t be a broadcaster. Don’t look into the camera and try to make a fifteen second point.’ I think people like his delivery because it’s real. He’s not trying to be Anderson Cooper or Brian Williams or Lester Holt.”