Inside The Minnesota Twins Players Project: Junior Ortiz, Big Papi, & Billy Martin

[Brock Beauchamp]

The players keep coming in our attempt to create specialized pages for all Twins players; come take a look at some of the newest members of the group!

What is the Players Project? It's a community-driven, wiki-style project that focuses on Twins players of all stripes. It's open to all Twins Daily users and we've had contributions for current players, past players, and players who never even made the major leagues but played in the Twins farm system. Create your favorite player today!

Junior Ortiz was a role player for the Twins in only two seasons: 1990 and 1991. He was also a bit of a lunatic. Read about his mid-season name change and weird antics in this great write-up from @Al from SoDak. Now that I'm thinking of it, I should probably make note of the swipe Scott Erickson took at Ortiz at our very own Winter Meltdown about ten years ago (probably the most famous Winter Meltdown in Twins Daily history).

Yours truly added Big Papi to the Players Project a week ago. Once a promising slugger, the position-less David Ortiz bounced between the minors and Metrodome for several years before breaking out in 2002. Whatever happened to him, anyway? One of baseball's great mysteries.

Billy Martin wasn't much of a ballplayer but was quite the manager. The problem is that he was also one of the great red-asses in baseball history and was fired by George Steinbrenner so many times both of them lost track of the number. Read about his role as both Twins player and manager in this fantastic retrospective on the man.

Thanks again to all who contributed this week, please stop by the Players Project by hitting the button below!

The Minnesota Twins Players Project is open to all Twins Daily users. If you're a Twins history buff or just want to dive into the background of your favorite player, come on board!

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