Cora reunites with his brother after year apart
‘He’s everything to me’
Alex Cora was in the middle of answering a question about his bench coach, Will Venable, on Sunday morning, when he turned his attention to the Red Sox’ afternoon game against the Pirates at JetBlue Park.
This one meant a little more to the Red Sox manager.
“Today is a big game,” Cora said, putting a serious look on his face. “This is a big game for us, especially for the manager. We better win this game for obvious reasons. We might go with everything today. We might hit and run, we might bunt, we’re doing everything possible to win this game. He’ll (Venable) learn a lot from the manager today.”
As he finished talking, Cora flashed a grin. He was joking, of course.
But the game still meant a great deal to Cora. The “obvious reasons” he referenced had to do with some friendly family competition. For the first time since Jan. 7, 2020, Cora saw his older brother Joey, a third-base coach for the Pirates, in person.
Cora, of course, was dismissed as Red Sox manager for his role in the Astros’ cheating scandal shortly after and then served a season-long suspension at home in Puerto Rico. Then the COVID-19 pandemic began, and they were unable to see each other until Sunday.
But they remained close from afar, talking almost every day. Cora leaned on several people as he went through a tough period, and as a man who values his family above all, that included his brother.
“He’s everything for me, he’s my brother, he’s my best friend, he’s my dad,” Cora said. “Probably, he wasn’t proud. We never go into that, how proud or not proud he is. But one thing for sure, he was there the whole time throughout the process checking on me, he was very important. Joey has been amazing for all of us. My mom, she’s the greatest, the way she handled the whole process last year was eye-opening, I learned a lot from her. But talking to my brother and the way he handled things … it wasn’t even a real season but I bet it wasn’t easy in a sense.
“But he really helped me out through this. When the whole process started, after the playoffs were over, we talked a lot about what might happen and here I am and I’m here because of people like him.”
Since he was rehired as Red Sox manager in November, Cora has continuously been accountable for the mistake he made, and how he put his family in a bad spot. That includes Joey, whose reputation he didn’t want to impact because of what he did.
“He stuck with me last year, not surprisingly,” Cora said. “Sometimes I thought about how people were going to treat him because of what I did and I don’t know, he never opened up about it. Obviously with no fans it was different. But that was one of the things that bothered me throughout the whole thing that people will point at him because of what I did and that’s not fair. That wasn’t going to be fair and hopefully he doesn’t have to hear stuff that’s not about him. We’re different guys. And what I did, I did. He didn’t.”
The brothers had some time to chat before Sunday’s game, which was caught by NESN, and Alex said he would see him after the game, too. He joked that it was a “tough one” to lose 9-4 but that it was fun to see his brother coach and be active at third base, and he’s looking forward to seeing him again on Saturday when the Red Sox visit the Pirates.
“It’s always a good time to be around him, to talk about baseball and talk about family,” Cora said. “He’ll tell me a few things that he saw today because we don’t play the Pirates this year so you know it’s always good for him to have another set of eyes somewhere else, and learn from our team.”
More importantly, he’s grateful to have his brother’s support, which he’s always had but took even more meaning last year.
“People make mistakes and you need people around you that are going to pick you up and are going to help you get back to it,” Cora said. “Of all the people, my family, I put them in a bad spot but at the same time I’m still the little kid from the family. I’m the youngest one, so there’s a lot of love and teaching throughout the process and they still teach me stuff. I’m still learning and I’m glad I have them around me and in good times and in bad times.”