After nearly 9,000 at-bats and over 500 home runs, David Ortiz gave a formal goodbye to Red Sox fans on Sunday afternoon. Sure, the Sox will most likely be playing well into October, so this isn’t his final game at Fenway, but it’d be weird if they started off every home game with Papi on the mic thanking everybody, which is why everyone treated his last regular season appearance in Boston as his swan song.
Before thanking the organization — and the commissioner of Major League Baseball — Ortiz took a moment to pay tribute to his mother, who died in a car accident back in 2002 (a year before he came to the Red Sox).