Red Sox Hit Home Run With Alex Cora

Once John Farrell was fired by the Boston Red Sox, the discussion around Boston swirled around who would become the new manager. There were a few candidates that were thrown around and one of them was Alex Cora. Then days later, Cora was officially announced to be the 47th manager. Sometimes the most obvious choices are the right choices and I am here to say that I love this hiring. Here’s why.

To start off, I truly believe that Boston is the greatest sports city in the world. But the problem with that is that we take our sports very, very seriously. So there’s a ton of pressure on Boston coaches and athletes. Just ask John Farrell and David Price. There was even an ESPN article that talked about how good and bad the job can become. So to make it in this town, I believe you how to know this town. Alex Cora played here for 4 seasons in Boston and was even part of the 2007 World Series Championship team. So he knows the passion of the fans and he knows the environment.

Another thing I like is that he’s been a coach in the past. Yes, he doesn’t have a lot of experience but he knows how a locker room works from a bench coaches’ perspective. The reason I bring this up was due to fan discussion of Jason Varitek and David Ortiz being considered for the manager. Those two would be terrible choices. Varitek and Ortiz have incredible game knowledge, there’s no doubting that; but they have no manager experience. I’ve been consistent with my hatred for hiring people with no coaching experience as head coaches. This goes back to Jason Kidd with the Nets and Derek Fisher with the Knicks. As a manager, you need to learn how to manage 25 personalities along with knowing baseball. Varitek and Oritiz couldn’t do that.

Finally, he’s Puerto Rican. Now I’ll probably going to get crap for this for being a social justice warrior but whatever. Cora is officially the first non-white manager in the history of the Red Sox and this is important for a few reasons. First, this is just a good step forward for a franchise that has a number of issues with minorities. Also, Cora is bilingual and that is huge. Cora should be able to commute and relate to his players on a different level, especially the Latino player, than Farrell did. So taking all of those points into consideration, I love the hiring of Alex Cora. Now we just need to get Giancarlo Stanton.

Written By: Steven Santoro (SVS_1993)