David Ortiz is back just in time for October baseball.
The Red Sox legend resurfaced on social media Thursday, tweeting that he was "catching up on all the tweets I missed the past few months" as he thanked fans for their "luv n support" since he was shot in his native Dominican Republic in June.
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 at a nightclub in Santo Domingo on June 9. The next day, the Red Sox flew him back to Boston, where he was hospitalized for seven weeks and underwent multiple surgeries for life-threatening injuries.
He threw out the first pitch at Fenway Park earlier this month and last week issued his first public comments since the shooting.
"I like to embrace people, make them feel comfortable around me," Ortiz told the Boston Globe. "I was always very accessible, but I think I’m going to cut down on that a little now.
"One lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t be naive. There are a lot of things going on now that you have to be aware of. I need to pay attention and be more careful."
More than a dozen people have been arrested in connection with the shooting, but Dominican authorities, who initially described it as an intentional hit on Ortiz, have since said their investigation led them to think the shooting was a case of mistaken identity rather than one in which Ortiz was targeted.
When Ortiz returned to Boston, he hired former Boston police commissioner Ed Davis' firm, The Edward Davis Company, to look into the shooting.
"I want to find out who did this," Ortiz said. "I’m not going to sit around and chill if there’s somebody out there who wants to kill me."
Ortiz, 43, is an icon in Boston after helping the Red Sox win three World Series titles while earning 10 All-Star selections.