David Ortiz is currently the leading vote-getter for this year’s Baseball Hall of Fame class, but he has an issue with one particular writer who did not vote for him.
The retired Boston Red Sox great appeared Wednesday on WEEI’s “Merloni & Fauria.” During the interview, Ortiz was asked about Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe, who recently submitted his Hall of Fame ballot and left Ortiz off it. Shaughnessy voted for Jeff Kent and Jeff Kent alone, his second straight year of submitting a Kent-only ballot.
Ortiz, who is in his first year of eligibility, reacted to the snub.
“You know Dan Shaughnessy has been an ---hole to everybody, so what can I tell you?” said Ortiz, per CBS Sports Boston. “It’s not a surprise for me, it’s not a surprise for y’all. Now he didn’t vote for me, so what can I do? I mean, seriously, that’s not gonna stop anything. It’s just one guy that didn’t vote for you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
“He’s got no damn power, bro,” Ortiz added about Shaughnessy. “You know that. He’s just got the power of the pen to write whatever he believe on. But everybody knows that he’s an a–hole. What else can you do?”
Shaughnessy’s peers definitely believe that Ortiz, a three-time World Series champion and one of the greatest sluggers of his generation, deserves to be enshrined in Cooperstown. As of a recent tally, Ortiz was the leading vote-getter in the 2022 class. He had 83.9 percent of the vote through 168 known ballots, well above the 75 percent cutoff necessary to make the Hall of Fame.
Granted, Shaughnessy, who has covered the Red Sox for several decades, has history with Ortiz that may be at the heart of this beef. Several years ago, Shaughnessy drew Ortiz’s ire with comments about Ortiz’s alleged PED use.
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