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How Alex Cora’s last hours as Red Sox manager played out | Chris Cotillo
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- How Alex Cora’s last hours as Red Sox manager played out | Chris Cotillo
BALTIMORE — In the minutes after the Red Sox routed the Orioles, 17-1, on Saturday afternoon in Baltimore, Alex Cora cracked a beer, joked with players and lauded his team for playing a complete game that snapped a four-game losing streak. Postgame dinner plans were made after an early, adjusted 12:05 p.m. start at Camden Yards.
When Cora and his staff returned to the Four Seasons Hotel Baltimore, though, an organizational shakeup awaited them. Principal owner John Henry, team president/CEO Sam Kennedy and chief baseball officer Craig Breslow — all of whom weren’t scheduled to be on the road trip — were waiting to inform Cora and five coaches that they had been fired, effective immediately .
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The scene at the Four Seasons was one of shock. Around 8:05 p.m., the trio of Henry, Kennedy and Breslow departed the hotel for dinner. Players milled around the lobby trying to make sense of the news. As players like Marcelo Mayer , Roman Anthony and Masataka Yoshida returned to the hotel from dinner, the crowd in the lobby grew as Cora and the fired coaches emerged with suitcases packed.
An ironically named Mercedes shuttle bus — with a “Coaches4Hire, LLC” label on its side — pulled up, ready to take the group to the airport. Wilyer Abreu , Zack Kelly and Ryan Watson were among the players to arrive in the lobby to say their goodbyes. Coaches who remained on the staff, like José Flores and Parker Guinn, returned to the Four Seasons to greet their former colleagues on their way out.
In the hours after the news hit the club, the group of fired coaches drank together and reminisced at the hotel. By about 9 p.m., the six fired or reassigned coaches — a group consisting of bench coach Ramón Vázquez, hitting coach Pete Fatse, third base coach Kyle Hudson, assistant hitting coach Dillon Lawson, major league hitting strategy coach Joe Cronin and franchise icon Jason Varitek — assumed their seats on the shuttle.
Minutes later, Cora emerged, hat backwards while pushing a carry-on suitcase, and was the last to board the van before the doors closed. In his last moments with the team, he thanked a couple members of the support staff who helped arrange his exit and told them he loved them.
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Cora delivered a two-word, somewhat-nebulous text to multiple reporters who reached out to him: “I’m happy,” he said. Varitek, on the other hand, took the news particularly hard despite the team saying he would be “reassigned to a new role within the organization with details of his reassignment to be announced at a later date,” according to sources.
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The scene played out less than 24 hours after Cora called a postgame team meeting after a blowout loss to the Orioles in the clubhouse at Camden Yards in an attempt to right the ship. As that meeting went on, high-level decisions were being made behind the scenes. One observer pointed out that Cora and the fired coaches had been flown from Baltimore to Hanscom Air Force base on a private jet that would have needed to be arranged Friday night.
Henry, Kennedy and Breslow, who arrived in Baltimore on their own charter earlier Saturday, returned from dinner 40 minutes after the shuttle left the Four Seasons. Henry did not acknowledge a reporter standing outside the hotel and went into the lobby. Kennedy and Breslow stopped to chat and largely deferred questions to Sunday, when they will both address reporters at Camden Yards at 10:40 a.m. Kennedy, speaking in hushed tones, took a moment to reflect.
“Incredibly difficult day,” Kennedy said outside the hotel. “We’ll discuss more tomorrow. Grateful to Alex for everything he has done for the organization and all the guys. We’re gonna move forward tomorrow.”
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The Red Sox, partly because Saturday’s game time was moved up and that allowed players to disperse after returning to the Four Seasons, did not get together as a group to announce the news. Therefore at least some players, after hearing whispers of a shake-up, found out via social media, according to sources.
“We’re gonna meet together tomorrow as a team,” Kennedy said. “We wanted to meet with Alex before talking to anybody else.”
Kennedy, a close friend of Cora and historically an ardent supporter of the manager, said Saturday ranked “right up there” on the list of tough days he has had in his role. In firing Cora, the Red Sox had made an in-season managerial change for the first time since 2001, when Jimy Williams was fired in August.
The news rocked the organization ahead of what was supposed to be a run-of-the-mill Sunday rubber game with Connelly Early on the mound. That game will now be Chad Tracy’s managerial debut, marking a new era in the franchise’s history.
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In recent days, there was little to suggest massive change was afoot. Kennedy, in a somewhat uncharacteristic move, was in the home clubhouse on Monday after the Sox’ Patriots’ Day win, but that was chalked up to him potentially meeting up with other team officials heading to the finish line. Cora was 40 minutes late for his pregame media session Friday but claimed he was on the phone with his twin sons, who had just returned to Puerto Rico after a lengthy stay in Boston . Back at Fenway Park, the wheels were already spinning after an embarrassing three-game sweep at the hands of the Yankees.
Cora’s bosses were plotting his exit, an eventuality even his team’s most lopsided win of 2026 couldn’t prevent. Over the years, when asked about job security, Cora repeated the same line, that managers sign their contract knowing they’ll eventually be fired. That happened Saturday one month into the second year of a three-year, $21.75 million contract.
By the middle of the night, Cora broke his silence publicly. At around 1 a.m. ET, there he was on Instagram, posing with his former lieutenants, all smiles next to the private jet that took them back to Massachusetts . It was a not-so-subtle message — just like a 4:12 a.m. tweet from Cora — that he was trying to take the news in stride, even if he privately stewed.
It took just a couple of hours for Cora to unfollow the Red Sox, his employer for much of the last decade, on social media apps. Just before 4 a.m., Cora sent a “reply all” to Kennedy’s initial email to every single member of the Red Sox organization announcing the changes. Cora thanked the organization for the support.
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“The Cora’s will be OK,” he said with a winking face emoji.
As he finally went to bed in the wee hours of Sunday morning, suddenly without a job, the words Cora had opened his postgame press conference with Saturday had rung true.
“That’s (expletive) baseball, man,” Cora said. “It’s unreal.”
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