Cora jabs Yanks at Red Sox parade, fans pelt team with beer cans
For the fourth time since 2004, the Boston Red Sox on Wednesday hopped on a fleet of duck boats and paraded through the city to celebrate a World Series championship.
But this was the first time doing so for rookie manager Alex Cora. And he made sure his first Red Sox parade would be a memorable one. When he took the microphone to address the crowd, Cora took shots at all three teams Boston beat in the playoffs, and used his best jab on the Sox’s most notorious rival.
In the American League Divisional Series, the Red Sox and the New York Yankees split the first two games of the best-of-five series, the Yankees winning Game 2 in Boston before the series shifted to the Big Apple. The Red Sox responded with a 16-1 win in Game 3, the biggest postseason blowout suffered by the Yankees in their history, before wrapping the series up in four games.
On Wednesday, Cora made sure everyone remembered how much he enjoyed Game 3:
“Think about it,” Cora said. “The New York Yankees. Yeah, the sky was falling. We lost Game 2 and it was panicking (in Boston). Everybody was all, ‘Whoa! It’s over!’ We scored 16 at Yankee Stadium. Suck on it.”
He was more polite to the Houston Astros, with whom he won a ring as an assistant coach last season before taking over in Boston.
“For how much as I care about those guys in Houston,” Cora said, “well, we went to Houston and we swept them down there.”
Then came the Dodgers, the team the Red Sox beat in five games to win the championship – and a team with whom Cora played in his career. In winning the final two games at Dodger Stadium, the Red Sox celebrated the championship on Los Angeles’s home field, just like the Astros did in 2017.
So Cora thanked the Red Sox fans who were in attendance at Dodger Stadium. Or perhaps he took a not-so-veiled shot at the notoriously fair-weathered fans in LA. Or both.
“And to finish it off, we go to this historic ballpark that holds 55,000 people. I played there for six years and I know how special Dodger Stadium is. And when Steve Pearce hit that home run in Game 5, it felt like we had 40,000 fans cheering for us at Dodger Stadium.”
Boston won a total of 119 games this season (108 in the regular season and 11 more in the playoffs), the third-most total wins in one season in MLB history.
During the triumphant parade through the streets of Boston, Red Sox fans apparently couldn’t resist the opportunity to toss beer at their heroes.
Unfortunately, the beer was still in the cans. And the honorees weren’t pleased.
“This definitely has got to stop,” outfielder Mookie Betts told a Boston Globe reporter on one of the parade boats. Betts’s mother and other members of his family were also on board.
And Betts wasn’t the only one who had to dodge the projectiles. Cora also was hit. So was the World Series trophy. And one fan was injured.
At least one person was arrested: A man police identified as Patrick Connolly, 19, of East Sandwich, Mass.
(Field Level Media/Reuters/ TNS)