Torii Hunter never regretted making the effort.

He knew what he was doing and he knew what he was risking when he went flying over Fenway Park's right-field fence, trying to catch the David Ortiz drive with a series and a season hanging in the balance. If Hunter had made that catch, the Tigers would have stayed in control of an ALCS they'd been dominating.

The Tigers had won Game 1 on the road and led 5-1 in the eighth inning of Game 2. They were heading back home with Justin Verlander ready to pitch in Game 3. If Hunter makes that catch, the Red Sox probably don't win the ALCS, let alone the World Series. If Hunter makes that catch, Ortiz isn't in the World Series, let alone its MVP.

If Hunter makes that catch, Steve Horgan is just another Boston police officer, not a local celebrity.

But, of course, Hunter didn't make the catch. He gave it a superhuman effort, only to come crashing down in a pose that made for a heck of a picture and a heck of a headache as Ortiz's drive landed in the Red Sox's bullpen for the grand slam that tied the game. The Red Sox later won the game 6-5 with a run in the bottom of the ninth and went on to take the ALCS in six games.

Two months later, Hunter was still sore, and not just because he just missed the catch that would have made him the hero of the 2013 postseason.

"My wife was telling me to retire," Hunter said this past summer. "She said, 'I need you at home the rest of your life.'"

He didn't retire. The physical pain faded. The mental pain still hasn't.

Even now, Hunter wonders how the Tigers could let Ortiz be the one who beat them. Even now, Hunter believes he would have made that catch if only he hadn't momentarily lost the ball in Fenway Park's lights. When it came out of the lights, it was hooking ever so slightly toward right field, forcing him to reach back as he leaped.

"I would have caught it," he said. "I'm 100 percent sure."

Hunter had been playing Ortiz to pull, even a little more than usual because Tigers pitcher Joaquin Benoit featured a changeup. But the changeup Ortiz hit was up, and he didn't pull it toward the Pesky Pole. Instead, it headed to the Red Sox's bullpen, more toward right-center field ... and into the glare as Hunter looked back.

"The ball was in this big bushel of lights," Hunter said.

He felt the warning track under him, but there was no way he was going to stop.

"I knew where the wall was, but I didn't care," he said. "I saw it, and the ball was almost fading behind me. I go up and turn my body, and now I can't control my body. When I saw it come out of the lights, I thought I had a chance. It tipped my glove. I made the play close.

"I was so upset. And I was in pain."

He came down headfirst in the bullpen. When Don Kelly arrived from left field to check up on him, he said Hunter had "a cut on his head and dirt all over him."

The Red Sox's bullpen crew went from celebrating a tie game to concern over Hunter's health.

"I'm OK," he kept saying.

"I was just pissed," he said later.

But it was more than that. Hunter passed all the concussion tests, so the Tigers allowed him to fly back to Detroit with the team. Even so, he said he felt so sick on the plane that he thought he might vomit.

He was determined to keep playing, but he said it required an injection of Toradol, an anti-inflammatory painkiller.

"I got through the series," he said.

Hunter knows the play will live on. He hears about it often, and not only from fans and the media. Other players bring it up.

"They say, 'What an effort,'" Hunter said. "And then they say, 'I wouldn't have done it.'"

He marvels at fate, which brought him together with Ortiz for a moment that will live on in postseason history. They were just kids when they first met, both trying to establish themselves in the major leagues with the Minnesota Twins.

"My best friend in baseball," Hunter said. "When the Twins designated him for assignment in '02, I was the first guy he called."

Hunter loves seeing Ortiz succeed and is thrilled that Ortiz now has three World Series rings. He admits, though, that he didn't pay too much attention to Ortiz's 2013 World Series success.

In the final days of last October, Hunter was still in too much pain.

In some ways, he still is.

-- Danny Knobler