BALTIMORE -- When David Ortiz enters a clubhouse, he strides in, confidently, almost dancing. He looks as if he owns the world and, at this moment, perhaps he does.
He says this is who he is. He is the man with the smile, joking and yelling and grinning all at once. His personality reaches out, into the stands, through the TV, across a table. He says it in his clothing choices -- the man prefers matching shirt-and-cap combos that are often about as loud as his voice.
''I think everybody pretty much knows what it's all about [with] me," Ortiz says. ''I don't like and I don't believe in people who are pretty normal when everything is going well and they change when they see a bump in the road. I let them know straight up I don't like it. That's the way I am. I don't like lies. I don't like two faces. I don't feel comfortable with it. I'll tell you what I feel in a heartbeat. That's me."
David Ortiz, on the field and off, does not hide.
That's part of the reason the slugger suddenly has become the most popular player in baseball, part of the reason he'll be on national television tonight, displaying his power-perfect swing in the Home Run Derby. Two and a half seasons after he was not tendered a contract by the Minnesota Twins, Ortiz received more votes than any other player for tomorrow's All-Star Game, picking up 4,138,141, including more online tallies than anyone else.
It's why he is beloved. Ortiz isn't the enigma that Manny Ramirez is. He doesn't have the stoic, no-nonsense persona of Jason Varitek. He isn't confrontational and dramatic -- except in his flair for the game-winner -- like Curt Schilling. Ortiz is what he is.
The only question is what made him that way.
Because Ortiz isn't smiling now. He isn't grinning, isn't shaking. He's sitting, simply, and pain washes through his eyes. He's talking about his mother and about how, since the accident, nothing can get him down. Because nothing, he says, will ever be quite so hard.
Angela Rosa Arias was killed in a car accident in January of 2002. It was, absolutely, the most difficult moment in his life.
''At that point I have to be the stronger [person] in the family because, pretty much, my sister, my aunt, my uncles, my pop, pretty much everybody got hit really bad," Ortiz says. ''I had to act like, 'Hey, let's hang in there.' I got to take the heat. I lose my mother, that I love, the person that give me the most love ever. But I never quit. I act strong in that one moment that was terrible. But I've got my pain. I deal with the situation. After that, I don't think I have faced anything worse than that, anything more painful than that.
''That's why I see everything in light and happiness."
