Bajos de Haina, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC — When David “Big Papi” Ortiz began his major-league baseball career with the Seattle Mariners just two weeks after his 17th birthday in 1992, he did what many new prospects do in this baseball-mad country — he bought his family a new home with his $10,000 signing bonus.

The modest two-story brick and lime-green stucco house is still owned by Ortiz in this hardscrabble municipality on the outskirts of the Dominican capital where he grew up. But after a career that saw him earning more than $160 million as one of MLB’s best players, the retired Red Sox slugger followed the lead of many of his pro counterparts, investing some of his wealth in the flashier parts of Santo Domingo.

There was a fleet of sleek sports cars as well as contracts for licensing his name for Big Papi Cigars and a winery. There was also a sprawling apartment in the Naco Blue Tower, a new, 15-story, luxury building where owners include the country’s biggest drug trafficker — Cesar Emilio Peralta — whose penthouse was raided by federal authorities last week.

For many of Ortiz’s hometown neighbors and friends, who have known the beloved ballplayer since he was a child playing on rubbish-strewn roads here, it was these trappings of wealth along with the shady associates and slinky women that inevitably followed that led to his near-death shooting at an outdoor bar in Santo Domingo in June.

The incident remains so shrouded in mystery that last week Ortiz, 43, hired the former Boston Police Department commissioner Ed Davis to get to the bottom of it.

“He is a victim,” said Rafaela Perez, 62, who now rents the home Ortiz bought for his family for the equivalent of $137 a month. “Everyone takes advantage of him because he is rich. You just don’t know what kind of people you are hanging around with, who want to take advantage of you.”

Ortiz, who is a hero in a country where his charity has paid for life-saving surgery for hundreds of impoverished children, said as much in his 2007 memoir “Big Papi: My Story of Big Dreams and Big Hits.”

“In the Dominican, it’s just a little hard sometimes,” Ortiz writes. “Baseball players are so big there — they become such heroes — that they forget we are all just people. But sometimes … they start to hang around all the time. It can make you a little worried.”

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Police who arrived on the chaotic scene of the June 9 shooting at the Dial Bar in the eastern part of Santo Domingo first described it as an organized mob hit on Ortiz, who was shot in the lower back at point blank range as he sat with friends at a table near the sidewalk. Later, after rounding up 14 suspects, including the alleged shooter, police said the attempted murder of one of the country’s most recognizable and cherished sports heroes was simply a case of mistaken identity.

But a Dominican source close to the investigation described it as a hit — “a crude message” in retaliation for Ortiz backing out of or refusing a deal. The source would not provide details.

A spokesman for Ortiz denied he was involved with any underworld types. “The idea that he’s going to play around the edges is laughable,” Joe Baerlein told The Post. “This is a sophisticated guy who has many endorsements. He’s not going to risk that.” Ortiz is a pitchman for Foxwoods Casino, Eastern Bank in Massachusetts and has a contract with Fox Sports Network, Baerlein said.

Shortly after the shooting, news reports speculated that the hit was ordered by Peralta, known by his underworld moniker “El Abusador” — the Abuser — over a love triangle involving Dominican model Maria Yeribell Martinez Garcia.

The leggy brunette was seen viciously fighting with another woman inside the private clinic in Santo Domingo where Ortiz was being treated following the shooting. Outside, more than 400 family members and fans had assembled after reports that Ortiz was undergoing emergency surgery in which doctors removed his gallbladder and part of an intestine to save him. He was later flown to Boston for more medical care.

A local newspaper, “El Dominicano,” said that the married Ortiz had bought Martinez a luxury SUV at a local Lexus dealership. The paper also published ownership papers for the car in her name and a check signed by Ortiz on June 8, a day before he was shot. The Ortiz spokesman told The Post that Ortiz did not buy Martinez a vehicle, but did say she is a friend that he has known for seven or eight years.

“He considers her a friend and he has been seen with her at public places with other people around,” Baerlein said.

Martinez, who has removed most of her social media posts after a video of the fight at the clinic emerged, denied rumors she was dating the retired Red Sox player. She told a local paper that the vicious fighting in the hospital waiting room with another woman — Fary Almanzar Fernandez — was over “a personal issue” and had nothing to do with Ortiz.

While the motive for the shooting remains a mystery, the incident continues to raise many uncomfortable questions here about the ties between professional baseball players and drug trafficking as Dominican authorities recently rounded up dozens of suspects in the biggest drug bust in the country’s history.

On Thursday, former Mets players Luis Castillo and Octavio Dotel, who were among 18 suspects accused of links to Peralta, were both cleared of any wrongdoing after a local federal judge ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to try them on money-laundering charges. Dominican prosecutors had originally claimed that Peralta, who remains at large, often leaned on MLB stars in order to launder cash from the proceeds of his marijuana and cocaine empire. Dotel still faces a weapons charge after authorities allegedly found a gun during a search of his home.

Moneyed baseball players are easy targets for mobsters who often lure them into shady business deals, a Dominican attorney told The Post.

“Some of these players hook up with bad elements from their childhood,” said Pedro Cassals, a criminal lawyer who specializes in fraud and money laundering. “The crooks know that baseball players, who are seen as gods in this country, won’t be subject to the same due diligence with the banks, so they hit them up to act as fronts when they want to buy property or invest in businesses.”

The majority of players recruited in the Dominican Republic have little idea of how to administer their riches once they sign multi-millionaire contracts. The Dominican Republic has produced 749 major league players, more than any country outside the US. Most come from poverty and begin training when they are still in elementary school, their families hoping that they will sign contracts with big-league teams by the time they are teenagers.

“It’s like winning the lottery for poor families,” said Nathanael Perez, a sportswriter for “Diario Libre,” a leading Dominican daily. “The families put their kids in training when they are 6 and 7 years old and as a result they miss out on an education.”

In 2018, major league teams signed 710 young baseball hopefuls in the country. While most receive less than $10,000 each in signing bonuses, some hit the jackpot. In July, the Yankees spent over $5 million on Jasson Dominguez, a talented 16-year-old outfielder.

“When you give poor people that kind of money, you are solving many of their problems, but you are also creating many more,” Perez said.

Problems arise when wealthy players go on shopping sprees and are lured into shady investments. In March, Miguel Tejada, a former star with the Baltimore Orioles and Oakland Athletics, received a one-year suspended sentence when he wrote a bad check in Santo Domingo. Tejada, who runs a chicken farm in Florida and who filed for bankruptcy in the US in 2014, wrote a $72,000 check to a business associate without sufficient funds in his bank account. Tejada, 45, made more than $96 million as a ballplayer.

“Generally, they administer their money very badly,” said Julio Cury, a lawyer who once represented Luis Castillo in a business venture gone wrong at a luxury resort. “Their business partners cheat them and overcharge them because they know they have tons of cash. Honestly, I really prefer just to deal with corporations rather than baseball players.”

For his part, Ortiz appears to have tried to distance himself from those underworld elements who try to take advantage of professional baseball players. Ortiz sold his apartment in the Naco Blue Tower shortly after Peralta bought the penthouse in the building, a source told The Post. The drug trafficker, who is wanted for the distribution of thousands of kilos of cocaine and marijuana from Colombia to the US and Europe, has more than 50 properties scattered throughout Santo Domingo, the source said.

“He was always really careful about where he was and who he was with,” said Baerlein, adding that Ortiz sold his apartment after he saw “Peralta’s thugs hanging out in the building.”

Last week, Dominican federal agents, wielding automatic weapons and their faces covered with black balaclavas stood sentry outside the Naco Blue Tower while their counterparts searched Peralta’s apartment on the 15th floor. Earlier, they had arrested Peralta’s wife, Marisol Franco, on suspicion of money laundering. Federal agents also took her four children into custody.

Back in Ortiz’s hometown, which was built around a now-shuttered car battery factory and is among the world’s most polluted municipalities, neighbors are certain their most famous son was not knowingly involved in anything shady.

“David has nothing to do with those people,” said Franklin Andujar, 74, an Ortiz family friend. Andujar said Ortiz paid for a nephew’s medical treatment a few years ago. “He’s a good, honest man.”

Still, many in Ortiz’s hometown told The Post last week that they are waiting for answers to a simple question — Why was David Ortiz shot?

Baerlein said that investigator Davis is working with the Dominican authorities to find out, but added that the investigation has only just begun. “We’re still in the third inning,” he told The Post.

“It’s a big mystery,” said Manolo Mejia Aualo, 68, a former Ortiz family neighbor. “We are all still in shock.”