Alex Cora celebrated the 2018 World Series after trophy presentation with his daughter (Getty Images).
By TERRY LYONS
BOSTON - The Boston Red Sox did the right thing. Sox head baseball man Chaim Bloom did the right thing and this winter in Fort Myers on February 16th, if things go as planned, it will be time for all of the Red Sox players to do the right thing and play their hearts out for their new/old manager Alex Cora.
Yes, the players will “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Cora was the man “who spurred us on” to the tune of 108-54 in the regular season and a march right through to the 2018 World Series and a (4-1) shellacking of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
There’s no question his “judgement was all wrong” when Cora and the Houston Astros cheated all of baseball when the ‘Stros conceived a sign-stealing contrivance that used modern technology and old fashioned morse code on a Gatorade jug to relay their opponents’ pitching signs to Astros batters during the 2017 and 2018 seasons.
Anyone who’s ever played the game knows, it’s just wonderful to have a 10-second advance warning that a change-up is about to come at you at 84-mph, rather than the heat of a 98-mph fast ball. For some hitters, the opposite is true, and the ball travels further … with exit speeds faster than a speeding bullet.
To that end in 2017, Cora helped mastermind the techniques utilized to crack the pitching codes, according to a Major League Baseball investigation. It cost Cora his job, as he’d moved on to be hired as manager of the Red Sox and enjoyed that glorious 2018 season. The cheating scandal also cost Houston GM Jeff Luhnow and team manager A.J. Hinch their jobs. All three were suspended for the 2020 season and paid their debt to baseball.
Twenty-twenty was a strange and difficult season. It remains a strange and difficult year, on all fronts, socially, politically, mentally and financially. There’s “nothing in the streets,” and there’s been pretty serious “parting on the left and parting on the right.” Our “beards grew much longer” all this time during a pandemic-shortened, no fans season that culminated with the Dodgers winning the World Series with a wire-to-wire impressive season of baseball.
Cora sat out, dismissed by mutual consent last January. Sox loyal bench coach, Ron Roenicke, stepped up to the head table and did a very admirable job amidst tough circumstances, and the loss of the team’s best player (Mookie Betts) to free agency (LA) and their best pitcher (Chris Sale) to Tommy John surgery. It just didn't happen for the Sox or for Roenicke and he was dismissed as the short 60-game season ended.
It might be time “for a new revolution” and to “pick it up and play.” Certainly, to put an end to this mess, we’ll all “get on our knees and pray.”
Cora will be re-introduced via a Zoom tele-press conference today after the news broke of his re-hiring Friday (first reported by MLB Net Jon Heyman). The Sox manager served an 11-month sentence in Baseball purgatory, many doubting the Boston team hierarchy would entertain his candidacy as manager. But, Cora’s popularity with the players, the fans, the entire organization and even the media makes him the only choice to lead the team.
Fenway Park (Photo by T. Peter Lyons)
It will be a difficult road as the Boston pitching staff was decimated, and unless both Sale and the likes of (COVID+) Eduardo Rodriguez can return healthy. E-Rod is still battling post COVID-19 complications from myocarditis, a dangerous condition of inflammation of his heart muscles. Thankfully, his prognosis is good and his return is expected when pitchers and catchers (hopefully) report to Spring Training in February, 2021.
Cora will be given his second chance, and he deserves it. But, there’ll be one consistent message from a baseball-loving, sports-hungry fandom - from Red Sox Nation in New England and all across the land and from the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball.