BOOM: Big Papi Declares That He’s ‘Never Trump’ (VIDEO)

Oh, man, I will never, ever forget the baseball season of 2004. My beloved Boston Red Sox, the team I’d been following since 1967, finally won the World Series. They finally ended the “Curse of the Bambino.”

THAT was a fun October.

Although there were a lot of great players on that team, the all-around favorite was David Ortiz, our “Big Papi.” I’ve lived in Massachusetts my whole life, and I can tell you that big David was our hero.

He cemented that hero status after the Boston Marathon bombings, when our city was shaken to its core. Before the very first Sox game after that terrorist attack, Big Papi took the microphone. He rallied the entire New England area by saying:

This jersey that we wear today, it doesn’t say Red Sox, it says Boston. We want to thank you, Mayor Menino, Governor Patrick, the whole police department for the great job they did this past week. This is our f*cking city! And nobody going to dictate our freedom. Stay strong.”

The Red Sox All Star has never spoken out about politics in any way. Not local politics, not national politics.

RawStory reports that Ortiz has just made himself a hero forever to legions of liberal Red Sox fans.

For the first time in his long career, in his final season, David Ortiz has broken his long political silence.

The baseball star, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, slammed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Big Papi is a Latino man who is not only a baseball star, but also an active member of Boston’s Latino community. He takes personal offense at Trump’s continued attacks on immigrants.

Ortiz told USA Today that he is alarmed by Trump’s hateful rhetoric. He said that he finds it frightening for a presidential candidate to label Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers.

He said:

“When you speak like that about [immigrants], it’s a slap in the face.”

Ortiz wanted to refute Trump’s comments by talking about the huge role that Latino immigrants have made in the American economy. He said:

“Latin people here in the United States are the spark plug of the country’s economy. Whoever opposes that is going to lose. And not just Latin people but immigrants. I’m talking about people who come from Africa, from Asia, other places. All those people come here with one goal, to realize the American dream, and you have to include them in our group.”

I love Big Papi. I’ll never forget his role in bringing that World Series trophy to my beloved Fenway Park. The thing is, his ideas are pretty damned obvious to anyone with a brain. Of course anyone who wants to be President of these United States should be inclusive of all immigrant group, all colors, all religions. Of course!

If David Ortiz has figured this out, why the hell can’t Trump?

Watch Big Papi as he helps New England recover from the shock of the Marathon bombings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6JDF1Prrqk

Featured image by Keith Allison via Flickr. Available through Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License.

Karen is a retired elementary school teacher with many years of progressive activism behind her. She is the proud mother of three young adults who were all arrested with Occupy Wall Street. To see what she writes about in her spare time, check out her blog at "Empty Nest, Full Life"