Ryan Dempster running 2023 Boston Marathon for Lingzi Lu Foundation
BOSTON -- Ryan Dempster pitched in the big leagues for 16 years for five different teams. His final -- and only season -- in Boston was 2013.
A decade later, that one year and the events surrounding it have inspired Dempster to run the Boston Marathon.
"I'm super thrilled to be running the Boston Marathon. I started 10 years ago on Patriots' Day, that horrible day of the Boston bombing, and our team was part of something really special afterward with the city to rally around and trying to turn a tragedy around into triumph," Dempster told WBZ-TV's Dan Roche.
Dempster was the starting -- and winning -- pitcher on that Patriots' Day in 2013, a day that forever left an impact. He's running the 2023 Boston Marathon for the Lingzi Lu Foundation.
"I want to run to honor and remember all the people who suffered that day and raise some money for a really special young lady, who is a great person to model yourself after."
Dempster can recall many things from that unforgettable time, including when David Ortiz addressed the Fenway crowd just five days after the tragedy.
"Walking into the locker room, you had the Mayor, the Governor, the head of the secret service, you had special forces, Navy Seals. You had military, Boston PD, Boston Fire, EMTs. Our locker room - you couldn't move there were so many people," he recalled. "And in a weird, magical way, it provided this amazing connectivity where we almost felt invincible.
"We had all these people at our back," Dempster added. "And David, you could tell he had something brewing in his head the way he was walking around. He said 'You don't want to miss this.'"
That's when Ortiz delivered one of the most memorable F-bombs in Boston history.
"Going out there, I get goosebumps just thinking about that," said Dempster. "Him saying everything and not being afraid to drop an F-bomb. Because it was all true."
Dempster and the Red Sox seemingly carried that emotion all the way to a World Series title. It was almost like it was meant to be.
"Yeah, it really did feel that way," said Dempster. "Sometimes you can talk things into existence, so when you talk about it enough things actually happen. And we had the backing of a city, the backing of the fans, and we became an unstoppable force. We felt a lot of responsibility to go out there day in and day out and give everything we had, especially after everything that took place on Patriots' Day."
Come Monday, Dempster will take that mindset onto the 26.2-mile course from Hopkinton to Boston when he runs in honor of Lingzi Lu.
"If I can do great by her name and bring some relief to families who suffered through this, in a special moment, that's what I'm running for," said Dempster. "And I'm not going to stop. I'm going to keep going as hard as I can that day."
