Replacing Cora won’t be easy
Former manager exuded confidence
Alex Cora has that rare ability to ooze confidence without it crossing the line into obnoxiousness.
It was Cora’s healthy dose of self-assurance that gave Henry pause when he was pondering hiring him, as the owner revealed during a meeting with reporters last February in Fort Myers.
“It’s funny,” Henry said, “my biggest concern was that I thought he might be overconfident when we first met with him.”
Henry said it was his only concern at the time.
“But it turned out that confidence really enables him to do a lot of things you don’t see managers do very often, and you don’t always know why a manager does things,” Henry said. “But he did so many things, including during the playoffs, that were open to criticism that worked out, so he didn’t get a lot of criticism. But again, his confidence and instincts in what he’s doing were one of the keys to the season.”
And in the end, Cora’s confidence led him to believe he could cheat without getting caught. So as it turns out, Henry’s concerns about Cora possibly being overconfident were justified.
Club officials never admit it when they feel good about firing managers and coaches, but if you look closely, sometimes you’ll see they say what they say with fingers crossed behind their backs. Not so this time.
As statements go — and they are only so good and don’t ever take the place of a press conference, which the Red Sox will hold today at 1 p.m. — the joint one released by the Red Sox and attributed to owners Henry and Tom Werner, CEO Sam Kennedy and Cora was full of sincere words.
Sox bosses liked Cora a lot and he liked them, but he had to go and had to go before Major League Baseball announced his suspension, and everybody knew it.
MLB made it clear it didn’t view elaborate sign-stealing schemes involving electronic devices with the same wink and nod as old-fashioned sign-stealing. Cora never adjusted and got hooked on becoming the game’s most skilled sign thief. He payed with his job.
Even so, the World Series the Red Sox won in 2018, Cora’s first season as the club’s manager, will be his lasting legacy, his cheating an asterisk, not an eraser.
There is no crying in baseball and there is no vacating of World Series titles. Not in this sport. So the Astros forever will go down as 2017 champions, helped by the sign-stealing scheme in which Cora was deeply embroiled.
The Red Sox statement, of course, doesn’t address what role management played in laying down the law for Cora. They’ll be asked about that at the press conference. Did the owners and/or Kennedy pull Cora aside and make it clear to him that he would have to follow the rules? Did it ever come up? Or did they let him know he could do what he thought he needed to do to win, but would pay with his job if he got caught?
It’s nice to see the Red Sox acted swiftly and didn’t assemble focus groups to decide what to do. And they don’t have time to assemble one to choose the next manager, either.
If the Sox weren’t such a corporate organization and wanted to buzz one under MLB’s chin for cracking down on their manager’s cheating, they could hire Pirates third base coach Joey Cora, Alex’s older brother who has interviewed for several managing jobs. No chance. Joey’s temper runs hotter than his younger brother’s and he would be viewed by cautious Sox management as too difficult to control, but he is a good baseball man and deserves a shot somewhere.
It won’t be easy for the Sox to find a manager who blended all the qualities that made Alex the ideal modern manager. He bought into the analytics that make front-office types giddy, communicated well with players, let them know why he did things before he did them, and was a skilled voice and friendly face to represent the organization that lacked beyond him lacked personality.