David Ortiz thanks fans for their support in first tweet since shooting
Boston Red Sox legend David Ortiz tweeted Thursday for the first time since he was seriously injured in a shooting at a Dominican night club in June. "Big Papi" used his return to social media to thank his fans for their support.
"Yooo @Twitter...I'm baccckk catching up on all the tweets I missed the past few months," he wrote around 12 p.m. ET on Thursday. "Thankful for all the luv n support."
The baseball community celebrated his return to the platform. "Welcome back, Papi!" wrote the official Twitter account of Major League Baseball (MLB), accompanied by a gif of people holding up signs spelling his last name. All-star pitcher Jeff Locke tweeted a fist-pound emoji in solidarity.
On Wednesday, he and his dad were featured in a sponsored video for the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company and The Players Tribune, which was posted on Twitter. He later retweeted the video, with a sweet message to his dad, "I could never repay my father for all of the sacrifices he made for me. But I can give to my own children what he has given me."
The beloved former slugger spoke publicly for the first time since the shooting last week in separate interviews with Univision and the Boston Globe. He spoke about the near-death experience and how he began to lose hope during his recovery.
He also dismissed public speculation that he was the target of the shooting and claimed that he wasn't involved in anything unsavory that would have preceded the attack. "I don't have enemies. I don't know why anyone would want to do this to me," he told Univision.
He made his first public appearance earlier this month when he threw out the first pitch before the Red Sox played the Yankees at Fenway Park.
Yooo @Twitter ...I’m baccckk 😎😎 catching up on all the tweets I missed the past few months. Thankful for all the luv n support 🙏🏿
— David Ortiz (@davidortiz) September 19, 2019
Ortiz was shot in the back June 9 in the Dominican Republic. The 43-year-old was rushed into surgery there where doctors removed his gallbladder and part of his intestines before he was flown to Boston.
He was moved out of intensive care June 22, but remained at Massachusetts General Hospital until he was released July 26.
More than a dozen people have been arrested in the Dominican Republic in connection with the shooting. Dominican police have said Ortiz was not the intended target.
Ortiz said the motive of the shooting remains a mystery. He has hired former Boston Police Commissioner and current CBS Boston security analyst Ed Davis to investigate.
"I want to find out who did this," Ortiz told the Globe. "I'm not going to sit around and chill if there's somebody out there who wants to kill me."
Ortiz plans to resume his role as analyst for Fox Sports during the MLB playoffs in October and expects to be fully recovered by Thanksgiving, CBS Boston reported.