As much as it is horror-inducing to imagine, there was apparently a chance that David Ortiz could have been traded by the Boston Red Sox during the 2003 season. We can all breathe easy knowing that this never happened and 2004, 2007 and 2013 did, as well as all the non-World Series winning years of glory that Ortiz brought Boston.
But what if that trade had occurred? Well then we’d be in the darkest timeline or, as it will forever be known, the Shea Hillenbrand timeline.
After the first two months of the 2003 season, Ortiz was being very un-Ortizian, or at least un-Ortizian compared to what the Red Sox would come to expect from him over the next 13 seasons.