Cora cops to rookie mistake
Unusual to see skipper admit fault on decision
Red Sox manager Alex Cora told a bit of a whopper during yesterday’s pregame media huddle at Fenway Park.
Cora also made a startling admission about a managerial miscue, something that happens in big league baseball about as often as Halley’s Comet passes by Earth.
Let’s get the whopper out of the way first, since it’s really no big deal and happens to be a go-to for anyone who, for any number of reasons, can’t admit that a game between the Red Sox and Yankees is a bigger deal than a game between the Red Sox and, well, anybody else. But silly Cora sat there and said the Bombers’ first 2018 visit to Fenway Park is “just another series,” which, if history has taught us anything, simply is not true.
Perhaps what Cora meant to say was that, being a manager — not a player, not a bench coach, but a
manager, as in Tommy Lasorda, Davey Johnson, Terry Francona and other skippers for whom Cora played — he can’t allow himself to get caught up in the sparklers and shiny baubles that help define Red Sox-Yankees.
If that’s where Cora was going . . . fine. But what’s even finer is that what we have here, Red Sox fans, is a manager who is so comfortable in his shoes that he’s willing to pull back the curtain a little and reveal the wizard is just a man. And men make mistakes.
In Cora’s view, his mistake happened in the top of the ninth inning of the Sox’ dramatic and improbable 8-7 victory against the Tampa Bay Rays Sunday afternoon at Fenway. The Sox, you’ll recall, had been trailing 7-2 in the bottom of the eighth but rallied for six runs, a joyous turn of events for loyal fans who ignored the chilly weather and remained in their seats. Cora dutifully sent closer Craig Kimbrel to the mound in the ninth inning to chloroform the Rays.
What Cora didn’t do, and what went unnoticed at the time, was send in a defensive replacement for left fielder J.D. Martinez, a man who looks scary in a good way when he has a bat in his hands and scary in a bad way when he has a glove on his hand.
The smart move would have been to remove Martinez, shift Andrew Benintendi from center to left, and send Jackie Bradley Jr. in to play center.
The ninth-inning outfield went unchanged. The Rays went down 1-2-3, failing to get the ball out of the infield. Everyone went home happy.
Two days later — that is, yesterday — Cora decided he had some ’splainin’ to do.
“Honestly, I’m going to be honest with you, we scored six runs and we were so excited about it, and the manager missed that one,” he said.
In baseball, talking about a game two days after it has been played is like cooking fish two days after it has been taken out of the refrigerator. In this spirit, Cora was asked why he felt the need to admit his mistake.
“Because I did,” he said. “Why lie? It happens. Everybody saw that. I think I ask our guys to be genuine, transparent and responsible. So if I am asking them to be that way, I better be that way because if I say something else, they know I am not telling the truth.” Genuine? Transparent? Responsible?
In Boston?
This is going to take some getting used to. But if Cora hopes to expect accountability from his players, then it behooves him to be, dare we say it, Accountability Alex.
The rookie manager, appearing last week on WEEI radio, was asked about his team’s many baserunning foibles. Rather than swat the question away or get into a juvenile stare-down contest with one of the hosts, Cora said, “It’s been a struggle,” and that “if we’re going to be elite, we have to be a better baserunning team.”
By the standards of 30 years ago, Cora’s on-air comment about base-running is harmless. I’ve covered managers who overturned postgame food spreads (Doc Edwards), challenged players to fights (Billy Martin) and buried players on the bench (Dick Williams).
Those days largely are gone. Cora isn’t about overturned food spreads, he isn’t about street fights, and he isn’t about player-burying. He just wants better baserunning.
And said so.
Cora makes mistakes.
He said that as well.