MIAMI — This isn’t your typical Red Sox-Yankees love affair, if such a thing ever existed before.
David Ortiz cannot get enough of Home Run Derby winner Aaron Judge, comparing to him movie characters.
“It’s an Avatar,” Ortiz told MLB Network’s Harold Reynolds on Tuesday afternoon. “This guy is not human. I mean, I experienced something yesterday… I had, like, a really good view of what was happening down here yesterday and to be honest with you, we experienced something new yesterday during the Home Run Derby, better than ever before. We had a guy that it seems like he was hitting from both sides of the plate. Because he was hitting balls oppo — not one, not two and not just over the fence.
“I was watching that and I was like, this ridiculous. So to me, yesterday was a new experience, a new stage in the home run derby, because I have never seen anything like that before.”
In another MLB Network interview with Kevin Millar, Ortiz said Judge was like a character from the movie “300.”
“Bro, seriously,” Ortiz said. “Seven foot tall, good looking, ripped. Zero body fat and super nice.”
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Judge said hello to Ortiz on the field Tuesday, and it wasn’t the first time they had seen each other recently. A little more than a month ago, Ortiz was at CC Sabathia’s charity event in New York and gave Judge about the highest praise a young slugger can receive.
“That kid is scary man. That’s the scariest thing I have ever seen,” Ortiz said in June. “A guy that big that hits like that man, that’s special.”
Ortiz predicted Chris Sale would win the game’s MVP.
“And my second pick is going to be my boy Mookie Betts,” Ortiz said.
Ortiz, who’s pitching Coca-Cola at the All-Star Game, said it was a noticeably different experience not playing because of how structured everything is when you’re participating as an All-Star. He got into Miami on Sunday morning, which was weird in itself, because players typically arrive in All-Star host cities late on Sunday nights.
Ortiz was recently in Europe with Red Sox owner John Henry.
“And we have a great time,” Ortiz said. "[We went] all the way around the coast between Italy and Spain and I experienced things that I had never experience before because I don’t know how to swim. So I was wearing my life jacket everywhere."