Stay strong: Boston sends off beloved Papi

They refused to leave their seats until David Ortiz returned for a final curtain call. They could not let him go this easily. They could not grasp that this is how it would end.

Big Papi had disappeared down the dugout stairs at Fenway Park at the end of the game Monday as the Cleveland Indians celebrated. He surely was a swirl of emotions, but he understood this was their moment.

Still, the Fenway faithful chanted his name and waited their turn to say goodbye. And then he popped his head out of the dugout, prompting a thunderclap of cheers.

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Ortiz walked to the pitcher’s mound, and there he soaked in the cheers again, tipping his cap and allowing the emotions to wash over him. This was a packed house trying to tell him what he’d meant to them.

His eyes swept around the ballpark once, twice, seemingly grasping, maybe for the first time, that this would be the last time he could truly call it his own as a player.

He was beloved, in part, because he was a bundle of emotion, sometimes laughter, sometimes fury. He was real, though, and he was pretty much one of them. He prided himself on that part of the deal.

• Emotional scene for Big Papi’s final game

Three years ago, he took the microphone one afternoon at Fenway Park and became the voice of a proud, defiant city days after the Boston Marathon bombings.

“This jersey that we wear today, it doesn’t say ‘Red Sox,'” Ortiz said. “It says ‘Boston.'”

He spoke a bit more before finishing with the words that became an anthem for a battered, scared city: “This is our f——- city. And nobody’s going to dictate our freedom. Stay strong.”

No, this wasn’t just another ballplayer saying his goodbyes. This had been a perfect marriage for the last 14 seasons, the happy, gifted kid from the Dominican Republic and a city passionate about its baseball.

Perfect ending? There are few of those. Ortiz dreamed of going out with one more championship parade, one more trip to the mountaintop.

Instead, his career ended when he drew a …

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