Book 'Em, Danno

The 2023 Boston Red Sox season starts this week, and at the same time a book comes out detailing the Houston Astros cheating from a few years ago, when now Red Sox manager Alex Cora was then (in 2017) a bench manager with the Astros. Naturally, members of the Boston sports media made Cora squirm in his first press conference of the season:

Opening press conference shows that, for Alex Cora, the book isn’t closed on 2017-18

Incorrect - the book isn't closed, for members of the Boston sports media. I'm pretty sure most normal fans don't give a rat's ass anymore.

FORT MYERS, Fla. — It’s never a pleasure cruise when you manage the Boston Red Sox. Hall of Fame-bound Terry Francona said it was the hardest baseball job he ever had, stating, “In Boston, it seemed like you were putting out brush fires every day.”

So how was Alex Cora greeted in his first 2023 picnic-table press conference at Fenway South Tuesday morning?

Hey, Alex. There’s a new book out today that details all your bad habits and cheating ways when you were with the Astros, and how you bragged to your 2018 Red Sox that ‘we stole that [2017] World Series.’ Care to comment?

OK, it wasn’t quite that harsh, but it was certainly not the way Cora wanted to launch the Chaim Bloom Celebration of Payroll Flexibility, which seems to be the theme of the basement-bound ‘23 Towne Team.

The actual first question, posed by WBZ’s Jonny Miller (who interviewed Eddie Kasko in Winter Haven in 1972), was, “Alex, first things first. Have you talked to anybody in the front office about remarks you made to Evan?”

Read on for more media grilling, and not of the good kind.