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