David Américo Ortiz Arias (born November 18, 1975), nicknamed "Big Papi", is a Dominican-American professional baseball player with the Boston Red Sox of Major League Baseball (MLB). Ortiz is a designated hitter (DH), and also occasionally plays first base in interleague games. He played with the Minnesota Twinsfrom 1997-2002.
Ortiz is a nine-time All-Star, a three-time World Series champion and he holds the Red Sox single-season record for home runs with 54, set during the 2006 season.
Each time Ortiz crosses the plate after hitting a home run, he looks up and points both index fingers to the sky in tribute to his mother Angela Rosa Arias, who died in a car crash in January 2002 at the age of 46. Ortiz also has a tattoo of his mother on his biceps.
Ortiz and his wife Tiffany have three children. Since marrying Tiffany, he has become a fan of the Green Bay Packers. (His wife hails from Kaukauna, Wisconsin, a town in between the cities of Green Bayand Appleton). However, in April 2013, Ortiz announced that he and his wife were separating.
On June 11, 2008, Ortiz became a United States citizen at John F. Kennedy Library in Boston.
Ortiz has received approximately $4.5 million in endorsements over the years. In April 2007, sporting-goods company Reebok debuted the Big Papi 10M Mid Baseball cleat, which Ortiz first used during the 2007 MLB All Star Game in San Francisco, California.
In October 2009, Ortiz opened a night club called "Forty-Forty" in his native Dominican Republic. In April 2010, rapper and producer Jay-Z and his business partner Juan Perez initiated a trademark infringement case against Ortiz, alleging that the name of Ortiz's night club was stolen from Jay-Z's chain of sports clubs in New York. In March 2011, Ortiz reached a settlement deal with Jay-Z and Perez.
Bio Source: Wikipedia.org