Alex Cora on Astros being booed at Fenway Park: ‘Tough to hear it’

When Alex Cora got home after the Red Sox’ 7-1 loss to the Astros on Tuesday, the manager wasn’t only bothered by the result of the game. It was also the booing the visitors and his former club received.

Cora had anticipated for weeks the treatment the Astros would receive in their first visit to Boston in front of the fans since the sign-stealing scandal surfaced last year, wondering what the reaction would be. The Astros have received some level of vitriol in every ballpark they’ve visited but Cora, of course, was at the center of the scandal as the Astros’ bench coach in 2017, labeled as the mastermind of it after Major League Baseball released its report last January, when he lost his job as Red Sox manager, then was suspended for the season before ultimately returning as the manager again.

But the crowd at Fenway made their displeasure with the Astros particularly clear. Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa and Alex Bregman were booed during pregame lineup introductions, and those boos grew louder when they stepped into the batter’s box. They were screamed and chanted at all night long. Correa earned a “you’re a cheater!” chant before ripping an RBI double in the second inning.

None of it sat right with Cora, who was honest with how he felt about it.

“On a personal level, tough to swallow,” Cora said. “Tough to hear it. Because at the end, I was part of that. I was part of the 2017 Astros and I was part of the whole sign-stealing situation and them being booed and screamed at the way they did, I was part of that, too. And like I’ve been saying all along, I know there’s a lot of people in this town who are fans of the Boston Red Sox that they don’t agree that I’m the manager. There’s others that yeah, they’re OK with it and others, they’re just happy that we have this record. But that was something I was wondering for a while, how people were going to treat them, because at the end, we were part of it.

“Me, Marwin (Gonzalez) were part of that and it was a tough one last night. When I got home, I thought about it, I was like, ‘Wow.’ It was tough. It was a tough night not only on the field — that part, whatever. I can deal with that. We will lose another game 7-1, but the fact that there were boos like that, that kind of like hit me, too.”

Cora said he’s talked with some of the Astros players, who said it’s been tougher for them at other places like Yankee Stadium, where they beat the Yankees in the 2017 ALCS. Cora said earlier Wednesday during an appearance on WEEI’s “Ordway, Merloni & Fauria” that the Red Sox didn’t receive much animosity this past weekend in New York.

“The New York thing is really tough on them, and they understand why,” Cora said. “They know why. … I know there’s a lot of people who boo them because they’re good, too. They’re the Houston Astros. But at the same time, most of the people are doing it because of what happened in ’17. But yeah … it was a tough one for me last night.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3gnjlZd