As a Red Sox fan from the Dorchester-neighborhood of Boston who once had the honor of working in the White House, I was truly disappointed in 2018 when the manager and a number of players from the World-Series winning Boston Red Sox chose not to make the traditional visit to the White House.
While their protest was built on a foundation of ignorance, it got them the attention they sought from the Trump-hating media.
As it turned out, one of the ringleaders of the symbolic protest was Red Sox manager Alex Cora.
Cora is now at the epicenter of one of the largest and most disgraceful cheating scandals in Major League Baseball history. It’s a sign-stealing cheating scandal that began when Cora was with the Houston Astros. The general manager and manager of the Astros were already suspended from the league for the year and then subsequently fired by the Astros owner.
All because an MLB investigation determined that the Astros cheated by using a camera-based sign-stealing system during the regular season and World Series-winning 2017 season.
The scandal taints the season, the players, and especially their World Series victory.
As it turns out, Alex Cora was not only the bench coach for the Houston Astros at that time. He was allegedly instrumental in arranging “for a video room technician to install a monitor displaying the center-field camera feed immediately outside of the Astros dugout.” Select players and coaches then watched the monitors to steal signs from opposing catchers.
Next, and not surprisingly, elements of that same sign-stealing system made their way to the Boston Red Sox after Alex Cora became the team’s manager for the 2018 season. The season saw the Red Sox win the very next World Series. Now, Cora has been fired.
Most deservedly so, if the cheating accusations are accurate.
Alex Cora used the tragedy of Hurricane Maria hitting his homeland of Puerto Rico as a pretense for not meeting with Trump after the World Series victory by the Red Sox. He maintained that he was upset that the president dared to dispute some of the death-toll numbers being put out by certain Puerto Rican officials. Cora said, in part, “I hate that people are making it a political issue … I have continually used my voice so that Puerto Ricans are not forgotten and my absence is no different. Therefore, at this moment, I do not feel comfortable celebrating in the White House.”
Historically, people who cheat are, by definition and action, generally not the brightest. In a staged hissy-fit, Cora decided the best way to “help” the suffering people of Puerto Rico was to avoid going to the White House, and avoid entering into a heart-to-heart discussion with the one person with the power to assist those people.
Instead, he decided to pompously and foolishly morph into the personification of the spoiled brat taking his bat and ball and stomping home.
Had Cora gone to the White House to meet with President Trump as he should have, maybe he would have learned that the innocent men, women and children in his homeland have suffered terribly and tragically over the last several decades, mainly because of extensive and protracted corruption reaching into almost every city, town and government facility on the island. That corruption stains the good name of Puerto Rico much like a cheating scandal stains and calls into question the integrity of Major League Baseball.
Cora is about to have a great deal of time on his hands. Hopefully, he will now be wise enough to use some of it to reach out to Trump to not only apologize for disrespecting him, but to ask how they might now work together for the greater good of the people of Puerto Rico.
Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.