There’s a wonderful update to the last week’s story about David Ortiz setting the record for slowest (non-injury) trot of the Tater Trot Tracker era.
Seriously, I’m beside myself with how excited this makes me.
In the initial post, I wrote:
The trot officially clocked in at 32.91 seconds — nearly 1.5 seconds slower than the previous slowest trot ever.
And that’s being generous! Because of the particular set-up of Fenway Park, there were no cameras to give a clear view of which foot touched home plate first. The 32.91 seconds assumes that Papi’s right foot is the one to reach the base first.
Now we know that I was, indeed, being generous with using the right foot in the official trot time. Thanks to a comment left by user bbliksteen8, we have video evidence that Papi touched home plate — and ended the longest trot on record — with his left foot. You can see it here:
With that evidence (which shows up at the 1:56 minute mark of this video), we can officially re-clock Papi’s record-breaking tater trot. The official time on the slowest home run trot of the Tater Trot Tracker era is now 33.39 seconds.
That’s just about half-a-second longer than what was originally reported, and close to two seconds longer than the previous slowest ever trot.
I’ve always loved Big Papi. Now I love him a half-second more!
