Some of us completely understand where David Ortiz is coming from when he makes a scene over an official scorer’s decision at Fenway.

In Little League, I once hit a clean single between shortstop and third. But when I got back to the bench after being thrown out trying to stretch it into a double, I discovered the lady who kept our scorebook wrote down an E5.

Miss Thinks She’s Annie Savoy explained that the third baseman could have made a play on the ball if he hadn’t been twirling around and making helicopter noises when I hit it. I protested to my coach, a dentist with bad breath, and he said it didn’t matter what she scored it because I had gotten thrown out at second anyway.

I stewed on the bench, waiting for Lady Backwards K to leave the book unattended (and, in retrospect, I guess her pencil, too) so I could scratch out the E5 and replace it with a 1B.

But I never got that chance. She guarded that scorebook like it was the Camp David Peace Accords. So at the end of the season, I had to settle for a lousy Coach’s Award trophy, the youth sports equivalent of the WWE Intercontinental Belt, rather than the MVP Award that would have rightfully been mine if I had one more hit on my 12-game stat sheet.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t have a gaggle of reporters to talk to after that game like Ortiz does (Kalle Oakes was just eight years old then). It’s probably a good thing because Ortiz is catching a lot of flak for his latest Little League outburst.

In the seventh inning of Wednesday’s win over Minnesota, he hit a hot smash to the right side that Twins first baseman Joe Mauer couldn’t handle. Most people with any experience scoring baseball would agree it should have been ruled a hit, but the Fenway scorer decided it was an E3.

At the end of the inning, Ortiz made his displeasure with the ruling known by flashing a ‘thumbs down’ towards the press box. Unable to leave it at that, he addressed it in post-game interviews, after a game he’d helped the Red Sox win in dramatic fashion with a game-tying home run in the 10th inning.

“I thought people were supposed to have your back at home, and it never happens,” he said. “It’s always like that. I’ve been here for more than a decade and the scorekeepers here are always horrible. This is home, man. I always look like the bad guy, but they always end up changing it.”

As the above statement implies, this is not Ortiz’s first beef with scorekeepers at Fenway. As far was we know, he’s turned all of them into public spectacles, complaining to the media, or at least in front of the media during one of his manager’s press conferences.

It probably won’t be his last beef, either. He seems determined to beat the shift every opponent now employs to turn the hot shots he so often pulls to the right side into outs. Chances are there are going to be one or two more of these plays where one of the ball clangs off the glove of a fielder more interested in self-preservation than making an ESPN Web Gem.

It seems no one has ever asked Ortiz to fully explain why he gets so upset when the scorer stiffs him. He clearly expects the scorer to be a homer. He still hasn’t been informed that official scorers are employed by Major League Baseball, not the home team.

Most of the speculation holds that money fuels his anger. Maybe he frets about a lost hit here and a revoked RBI there costing him on his next contract, which he starts worrying about before the ink is dry on his current one.

It’s easy to ignore Ortiz’s occasional tantrums because the man is so damn good when it matters, and generally likeable. Besides, the bar for athletes in Boston has been lowered substantially. He hasn’t shoved any elderly men to the ground or murdered anyone.

He’s the most popular Red Sox player of my lifetime. Yep, he’s surpassed Yaz, Dwight Evans, Roger Clemens (before he became a traitor), Nomar Garciaparra (before he quit on the team) and, yes, even Pedro Martinez. He’ll probably get a statue outside Fenway someday. His number will be retired if he’s voted into the Hall of Fame.

He isn’t the first popular Red Sox player to complain about a scorer’s decision. He is the first to do so this frequently in such a public manner and it’s off-putting. It makes him come across as selfish, as a bully, and as having his priorities out of whack.

Some athletes act like children. Imagine that. No matter how much segments of the Boston media try to make it into an issue, the fans don’t care because we all know Papi will come through when it counts. When he’s hitting .688 in the World Series, what difference does it make whether he’s more concerned about winning or his next contract? When he’s hitting series-changing grand slams in the ALCS, who cares whether he’s fueled by “Boston Strong” or because he was wronged by a scoring decision in May?

It makes one wonder what he would have to do for the fans to get as indignant as the pundits do whenever Ortiz makes a scene. Maybe next time he’ll take the elevator up to the press box, wait for the scorer to head to the bathroom or coffee machine, and hope he left his pencil behind.

He’s a DH. He can wait the scorer out. And probably bring his own pencil, too.