COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. -- He was a 10-time All-Star, a seven-time Silver Slugger, and finished in the Top 10 in MVP voting seven times. He's one of four players with 500 or more homers and 600 or more doubles. Only 16 players have hit more homers and 11 have hit more doubles. He was named as the game's top DH in eight different seasons.
All of which helps explain why David Ortiz was inducted into the Hall of Fame on a broiling hot Sunday afternoon. The numbers are indisputable.
But as impressive as those numbers are, they don't capture Ortiz's real value to the Red Sox. Even with the avalanche of statistics in the last 20 years, no metric sufficiently captures his true impact.
After all, how do you measure being the player who single-handedly changed the course of franchise history? How do you quantify -- beyond the three World Series rings, that is -- what it meant to alter the narrative for a team that has existed since the turn of the 20th century?
That ultimately is Ortiz's legacy. It can fairly be said that no player changed team history in the way Ortiz did.
If it's commonly accepted wisdom that the modern era of Red Sox baseball begins with Carl Yastrzemski and the 1967 Impossible Dream season, the winning era of team history begins with Ortiz and the 2004 Sox.
If the Sox were a photo, Ortiz would represent the "after'' shot.
You can recall his greatest hits -- the walk-off ones to win Games 4 and 5 of the 2004 ALCS; the game-tying grand slam in the 2013 ALCS; virtually every at-bat of the 2013 World Series -- and still not do his influence justice.
Because more than anything, what Ortiz achieved is nothing less than changing expectations and mindsets.
Before Ortiz and October of 2004, Red Sox fans were conditioned to expect the worst. It came from almost 90 years of experience. The Red Sox, it seemed, were designed to fail, often at the worst possible time. Four times in exactly 40 years, they took the National League champions to the seventh game of the World Series...and lost.
Too many other times to count, they tripped at the wire -- in 1972, in 1978, and in 2003. It wasn't a Faustian bargain, it wasn't pre-ordained, and it sure as hell wasn't retribution for selling off Babe Ruth. But it happened with such frequency, in the most soul-crushing of ways -- Little roller up along first, behind the bag, it gets through Buckner! -- that it was worth asking whether it would ever change.
For all his greatness, Ted Williams couldn't change the trajectory. Neither could Yastrzemski, who made the final out in 1975 and 1978 and became the sad personification of all the team's near misses. For the longest time, there was the belief that no one player could alter a narrative, no single figure had the power to redirect destiny.
If Williams, the game's greatest hitter, couldn't lead to a title, who could? If Yastrzemski could have one of the handfuls of best seasons in baseball history and still come up short, what hope was there for anyone else?
Then, following the unlikeliest of paths, came the hero. Traded by Seattle before being non-tendered by Minnesota, Ortiz arrived. At first, he couldn't beat out Shea Hillenbrand and Jeremy Giambi for playing time. Eighteen months later, he was changing the course of a franchise.
There were others, too.
In his speech Sunday, Ortiz shifted comfortably between his native Spanish and English, saluting teammates, managers -- Bobby Valentine escaped mention of his four Boston skippers -- and family members. He braced himself for the emotion that washed over him as his daughter, Alex, a student at Berklee College of Music, began the proceedings with a powerful rendition of the national anthem.
Predictably, Ortiz grew most reflective when speaking about his mother, Angela, who he lost in a car accident a year before coming to Boston. He cited his children, his father and other family members, all in attendance.
He was alternately somber and joyful, exuberant and ruminative. He exhorted his homeland in the Dominican Republic, and gave a deep thanks to his adopted United States, proudly citing his American citizenship.
He toasted minor league managers and farm directors who instilled in him the belief that he could one day succeed in the big leagues.
It should surprise no one that in his big moment on yet another national stage, Ortiz touched all the bases, masterfully blending both a lightheartedness with a serious retelling of his journey -- in baseball, and in life.
For 15 minutes or so, he peeled back the curtain and showed all of himself. For fans accustomed to his usual bravado and swagger, his seriousness of purpose was almost something of a revelation. This was David Ortiz, unplugged.
After a laundry list of individuals, Ortiz made sure to mention the team with which he is most closely associated.
"That organization,'' said Ortiz, "made me the man I am today.''
Perhaps.
But it can more accurately be said that David Ortiz made the organization what it is today. Without Ortiz, the first three World Series of this century are unimaginable.
Those trophies stand as his greatest achievement. That, and the way he changed the franchise's mindset. Before Ortiz, Red Sox fans had come to dread the worst. After Ortiz, they had earned the right to expect the best.