May 28, 2004: David Ortiz hits 100th career home run as Red Sox beat Mariners

The fifth-inning grand slam by David Ortiz put the Boston Red Sox ahead to stay in their 8-4 win over the Seattle Mariners on May 28, 2004, and it was the 100th home run in a career that ultimately saw him hit more than 500. It also helped maintain a sense of momentum in a year that remains a very special one in Red Sox history.

Ortiz had come to the Red Sox as a free agent, simply released by the Minnesota Twins in December 2002. He hit 31 homers and drove in 101 runs for the 2003 Red Sox. Indeed, in his seven seasons playing major-league ball through 2003, beginning with 15 games and one home run in 1997, he had increased his season home-run total each year, save for going homerless in 20 at-bats as a September call-up in 1999. He’d hit 10 in 2000, 18 in 2001, and 20 in 2002, after which the Twins let him go.

Ortiz had hit 58 homers for Minnesota and was at 89 career homers after his first season in Boston. Entering the May 28 game with the Mariners, Ortiz had 10 homers in 2004, with his 99th as a big leaguer coming on May 15 against Pat Hentgen of the Toronto Blue Jays.1

The May 28 game was on Friday night at Fenway Park. Manager Bob Melvin and the Mariners were in town to start a three-game series. Terry Francona and the 29-18 Red Sox were leading the American League East by a half-game over the New York Yankees. The Mariners (17-29) were last in the AL West, 11½ games behind the first-place Anaheim Angeles.

Francona had Pedro Martínez (4-3) as his starter; Melvin had right-hander Joel Piñeiro starting. The 25-year-old Piñeiro had been 16-11 the year before but was 1-5 at this point in the 2004 season. Martínez came in with a 12-0 career record against the Mariners.

The Mariners scored first, on a solo home run into the seats atop the left-field wall by second baseman Bret Boone in the second inning. Boston left fielder Manny Ramírez led off the bottom of the second with his 360th career homer, into the Red Sox bullpen in right field, tying the score, 1-1.

Seattle restored its one-run lead in the third. A ground-rule double by center fielder Randy Winn kicked off the inning. Winn took third when right fielder Ichiro Suzuki grounded to second and scored on a sacrifice fly to center by third baseman Scott Spiezio.

The Mariners added two more runs in the top of the fifth on a leadoff homer to left by shortstop Rich Aurilia, another double by Winn (this time to center), and a single to center by Ichiro, who was headed for a major-league record 262 hits in 2004.

After Ichiro’s single, a hit-by-pitch and a double steal put runners on second and third with just one out, giving Seattle the chance to break the game open. As the Boston Globe reported, “[T]hen Pedro became a different person. Catcher Jason Varitek made an advance toward the mound, but Pedro stared him back. ‘It was a look that told a thousand words,’ Varitek explained. … ‘He just started to get more aggressive.’”2

The Red Sox pitcher struck out future Hall of Famer Edgar Martínez and got Raúl Ibañez to pop up foul to third base. That ended the threat but, nonetheless, it was 4-1 Mariners.3

Piñeiro had allowed only one base hit to this point in the game – the Ramírez homer – and he had struck out seven. But the Red Sox tipped the scales the other way in the bottom of the fifth. With one out, right fielder Kevin Millar doubled to center. On the first pitch he saw from Piñeiro, rookie third baseman Kevin Youkilis doubled Millar home with a drive to left. Shortstop Pokey Reese struck out, but Johnny Damon and Mark Bellhorn worked back-to-back walks.

That loaded the bases and brought David Ortiz to the plate. Ortiz swung at the first pitch and hit a grand slam to right field. It was a high fly ball, “higher than it was deep,” a ball that just barely got into the Mariners bullpen.4

The grand slam gave Ortiz 100 career homers and the Red Sox a 6-4 lead. “I thought I had a chance at it when he hit it,” Ichiro said. Francona agreed, saying that until the “umpire signaled home run … I couldn’t tell if he caught it or not. I’ve seen Ichiro do that too many times.”5

Pitching with a lead for the first time in the game, Pedro Martínez opened the sixth yielding back-to-back singles by Bret Boone and first baseman John Olerud. Once again, the three-time Cy Young Award winner asserted himself when the game appeared to be slipping away, striking out Aurilia and pinch-hitter Dave Hansen. Winn swung at the first pitch he saw and grounded out, Reese to Brian Daubach at first base.

Daubach singled to lead off the Red Sox sixth but was erased when Varitek grounded into a double play. Millar battled for seven pitches but struck out.

Martínez set down the three Seattle batters he faced in the seventh. After Pokey Reese hit a one-out double to left in the bottom of the inning, manager Melvin called on left-hander Mike Myers to relieve Piñeiro. Myers walked Damon but got Bellhorn to hit into an inning-ending 6-4-3 double play.6

After the four runs, one writer said that Pedro Martínez had “turned what started as a shaky outing into a respectable one, leaving with nine strikeouts and no walks.”7 Alan Embree worked the top of the eighth inning, asked to hold the win. Ibañez singled, but two balls were hit to shortstop; Boone grounded into a double play and Olerud lined out.

Myers got Ortiz to ground out as the first batter in the Boston eighth. J.J. Putz then took over from Myers. Manny Ramírez singled to center. Daubach fouled off nine pitches before he doubled to right-center. Ramirez held at third base. After Dave McCarty entered the game to run for Daubach, Putz intentionally walked Varitek.

Gabe Kapler, who’d come into the game to take over for Millar in right field, popped up to the catcher. Youkilis doubled down the right-field line, driving in two runners. Reese grounded out, short to first, to end the inning. It was 8-4, Red Sox.

Keith Foulke came in to close the game. He alternated outs with a single and then a double to right by Ichiro, but the Mariners left runners on second and third and four runs behind.

Pedro Martínez got the win, improving to 5-3. He finished 2004 with a 16-9 record.

David Ortiz had his 100th career home run, the grand slam in the fifth inning, which gave the Red Sox the runs they need to win the game.

The Red Sox finished the season with 98 wins, though the Yankees won 101 and came in first. Boston had lagged as far as 10½ games behind the Yankees as late as mid-August, but finished strong, just three games behind – good enough to make the postseason and face the Angels in the American League Division Series. And Ortiz kept hitting home runs after May 28, adding 30 more before the regular season was complete.

The Red Sox swept the ALDS (an Ortiz home run winning the deciding game in the 10th inning), beat the Yankees in a hard-fought ALCS (an Ortiz home run in the bottom of the 12th in Game Four helped turn the tide after Boston had lost the first three games), and swept the World Series from the St. Louis Cardinals.

The trend of Ortiz hitting more homers each year continued with 41 home runs in 2004 (up 10 over the year before), then 47 in 2005, and a league-leading 54 in 2006. In 2007, when the Red Sox won the World Series again, he declined to 35 homers, which was still enough to tie him for third-most in the AL.

In all, Ortiz hit a total of 541 regular-season homers, 483 for the Red Sox. He hit 17 postseason home runs, all for Boston – a total of exactly 500 homers in a Red Sox uniform.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Carl Riechers and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS200405280.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2004/B05280BOS2004.htm

Thanks to Tim Herlich for assistance with Seattle newspapers.

Notes

1 Three of them (all two-run homers) had provided the run(s) that won the game for the Red Sox – against Toronto on April 10, in the bottom of the 12th inning against Toronto the very next day, and in the first game of two on April 29 against Tampa Bay.

2 Bob Ryan, “Ace Was Good Enough When It Counted,” Boston Globe, May 29, 2004: E6.

3 The four runs were an anomaly, wrote Seattle sportswriter John Hickey. “The Mariners had faced Martinez 12 times previously and had never beaten him. They’d never scored more than two runs in a game off him.” John Hickey, “M’s Can’t Stand Prosperity – Ortiz’s Grand Slam Ruins Bid to Finally Beat Martinez,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 29, 2004: D1.

4 Bob Finnigan, “Ascending M’s Slammed Down,” Seattle Times, May 29, 2004: D1. Both Seattle newspapers said he had hit it into the Boston bullpen, but video evidence clearly shows otherwise. Video Compilation of David Ortiz Grand Slams, “Every David Ortiz Grand Slam,” YouTube video (ESportsHighlights), 6:49, accessed June 23, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q-Y5j3vNWw.

5 John Hickey, “Ortiz Slam Barely Grand – Bases-Loaded Homer Just out of Ichiro’s Grasp,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 29, 2004: D8. It was only the second grand slam of Ortiz’s career. The first had come at Fenway Park on September 7, 2000, when Ortiz was with the Minnesota Twins. Ortiz hit it off Pedro’s brother, Ramón Martínez.

6 In early August the Red Sox claimed Myers off waivers from Seattle and he filled a need, working 15 innings in 25 games down the stretch.

7 Nick Cafardo, “Grand Fashion,” Boston Globe, May 29, 2004: E1. Cafardo pointed out that with the two solo homers he’d surrendered, Pedro had already given up nine home runs, two more than in the entire 2003 season. He ended up yielding 26 homers in 2004. After he led the major leagues in earned-run average for four of the five previous seasons, his ERA jumped to 3.90 in 2004, well over the 2.52 he had during his seven Red Sox years.