David Ortiz reacts to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot and what it means to him to join the list of Boston sports legends like Bobby Orr, Bill Russell and Larry Bird.
Talk about a question with no wrong answer: Ted Williams or Babe Ruth?
The question was posed to Boston Red Sox legend David Ortiz earlier this week at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, where he's set to become enshrined himself this summer.
If Big Papi had to choose between two of the greatest hitters of the 20th century, he'd go with the player who also has his number retired along a façade in right field at Fenway Park in Williams, according to Ian Browne of MLB.com.
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"To go to war a couple of times and be out there for a couple of years and come back and rake, that isn't human," Ortiz said while on an official tour of the Hall. "I don't care what anybody says. You get out of the game like that under those conditions and come back, basically just [play baseball] like it was normal, he was a unique human being."
Williams, who remains the all-time leader in on-base percentage (.482), missed three full seasons from 1943-45 while serving in World War II -- his age 24-26 seasons -- and played in only 43 games over the 1952 and '53 seasons due to service in the Korean War.
Williams still managed 2,654 hits over a 19-year big league career in Boston, where he's the franchise leader with 521 home runs -- Ortiz is second, with 483 -- and remains the last Major League player to hit .400 in a full season, when he hit .406 in 1941.
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"I would love to know what was going through his mind coming back and playing the game," Ortiz said.
Ruth, of course, spent his first six seasons with the Red Sox before his contract was sold to the New York Yankees following the 1919 season, going on to hit 659 of his 714 career homers in The Bronx and winning four more World Series titles. The Great Bambino remains the all-time leader in slugging percentage (.690) and OPS (1.164), nearly 90 years after he last played a game.
During Ortiz's visit to Cooperstown, he was able to grab hold of the bat used by Williams in his final at-bat in the majors, in which he hit a home run against the Baltimore Orioles at Fenway Park on Sept. 28, 1960.
