Something very rare in Major League Baseball happened recently: a manager admitted the umpires were right.
On Wednesday night, after the Boston Red Sox dropped a 4-1 game to the Houston Astros, Alex Cora—Boston’s often-fiery skipper—got tossed in the seventh inning after a heated, albeit relatively calm, disagreement over a balk call and a funky pitching motion by Astros righty Hunter Brown.
This all started in the sixth inning. Brown had just walked Jarren Duran. Then the umpire called a balk. The Sox dugout wasn’t thrilled, but that’s baseball. A few pitches later, Brown made a mid-at-bat switch from a full windup to the stretch, which set off even more grumbles from Boston’s side. Still, no call. So Cora, doing what managers do, tried to get some answers.
Intent to Learn or Misread Sarcasm?
Fast forward to the seventh. Cora steps out of the dugout again—not for a scene, not for theatrics, but to learn something. Seriously.
In the postgame presser, Cora didn’t go scorched earth. Instead, he basically said: Look, they got it right. I just wanted clarity because I’ve seen different interpretations before. That’s it. He claims he wasn’t sarcastic, wasn’t being snarky, just curious. But something must’ve rubbed the ump the wrong way, because next thing you know Cora’s walking off the field.
Cora didn’t sugarcoat it afterward. He flat-out said, “I hate getting thrown out,” calling the whole “rally the troops” cliché complete nonsense. “My job is to be in the dugout,” he added. “That’s bull—-,” referring to the old-school idea that managers get ejected just to fire up the team.
So while the Red Sox didn’t come out on top, and Cora didn’t finish the game, what we got was a rare gem—an MLB manager acknowledging a correct call, asking to be educated midgame, and calling BS on the myth of the noble ejection.
Now, that’s something you don’t hear every day.
