Cora sets it straight
Alex Cora had a few things to clarify yesterday after what took place at the World Series parade on Wednesday. As it pertains to the beer that was thrown toward him and his daughter, Camila, the Red Sox manager said he was upset at first, but then decided it wasn’t that big of a deal. “I panicked because it kind of like hit me and hit my daughter,” he said. “You ask my daughter and she didn’t care. She was like, ‘hey it’s part of it.’ I know the kid didn’t mean to hurt anybody. Obviously it’s dangerous but it is what it is. I guess he apologized. I don’t know where he’s at right now. But we’re fine, actually. I’ve just gotta be ready to make that play the next time.” There were also some confusing comments from Cora about those who doubted the Red Sox during the playoffs, and the skipper’s sharp words for what he wanted them to do. “The New York Yankees, yeah, the sky was falling,” Cora said on the Fenway Park stage before the parade on Wednesday. “We lost Game 2 and it was panic here. Everybody said, ‘Woah, it’s over.’ Then we scored 16 at Yankee Stadium. Suck on it.” Yesterday, Cora clarified that he wasn’t telling the Yankees to “suck on it.” “It was the people who gave up on the team after losing Game 2,” Cora said. “It was like, really? I think Xander (Bogaerts) said it best, ‘the Yankees in four after winning 108? Give us our respect.’ We have a good team. “That was, out of the three series, it was the one that’s really scary because it’s only five games. And you play them 19 times, we have to play them again. It’s so tough because as far as something new, they’re not going to reinvent the way they play in two or three days. They were going to do it the way they did it the whole season. There were no secrets or tendencies that they didn’t know about us or we didn’t know about them. So playing them right away, that was a grind. I’m glad we won.” The Red Sox seemed to feed off any negative media attention late in the year. “About the bullpen, yeah,” Cora said. “You’ll have to talk to (pitching coach Dana LeVangie) later on whenever you can. They used everything they heard, everything they saw, to their advantage. I think Dana had a meeting with them. It’s not that they needed it, because I believe in September, the way things were going as far as stuff, we were up there, velocity-wise. And I knew were going to attack guys differently in October. There were a lot of fastballs up and they did an outstanding job. “But that group, they took it personally. I’m glad they did what they did. That was fun to watch. As far as the panicking thing, not really. I don’t think they get caught up on what people talk about them. The first time I realized some of them did was Xander’s comments after the first series. But I never mentioned it to them, never did the, ‘rah-rah, hey, let’s go, they don’t believe in you.’ The only thing that really mattered was the way we felt about our team and they did it. They were really consistent about it.” Cora was also asked on Thursday about the Red Sox attending the White House, if invited. Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said the team had not yet been invited, to the best of his knowledge. If they are, Cora said, “I’ve been using this platform the right way the whole time. We’ll talk about it as an organization. Whatever we decide is going to be respected. If we decide to go I will use my platform the right way. I mean, if you start looking at this team we’ve got guys from the United States and from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Puerto Rico. So I’ll use the platform the right way. Like I said before, and I know the headlines don’t show it, I said I respect the president of the United States and I know he helped our country. So whenever we have to make that decision we’ll make it and it’s going to be respected.” Cora will bring the World Series trophy to his hometown of Caguas in Puerto Rico this weekend. “I don’t know how many people will go,” he said. “There’s a few. Obviously Christian (Vazquez) is going. Eddie (Rodriguez) is going. There’s a few that, there’s people going home, flying home. But it should be fun. We fly in Saturday .... They’re expecting a lot of people. Treat these guys with a lot of food and beverages and just show the people from back home that they’re part of it.”