Baseball, like all sports, is full of superstitions, routines, and rituals. Some say they work, some are more skeptical.
Following a tough stretch of games, Alex Cora jokingly said that he'd shave his beard to see whether that was the adjustment the Boston Red Sox needed.
He stood by his word, shaved, and all of a sudden his team's dormant offense is right on track again.
Cora addressed the superstition right after the game. However, he knows his team's success doesn't depend on his facial hair:
"Yesterday I got up and took the family to the airport and decided to shave. If we win 10 in a row, it's on me because I should have recognized that before," Cora said. "If our offense depends on my facial hair, we're in big trouble."
Some of his players didn't even notice that the beard was gone, which wasn't much of a surprise to the skipper:
“I was telling the guys, you know how we get in the habit of saying hi just to say hi to people?” Cora said. “And there was a lot of people that will walk by my office — I’ve got two doors, — they’ll walk by, ‘What’s up AC?’ And some of them just kept going so they didn’t pay attention. And others will be like, ‘What’s up AC?’ and then in a second it was like, ‘Oh, gosh.’ So whatever. It is what it is.”
While he hadn't addressed that side of him publically, Cora admitted to being a little superstitious. However, he claims his brother Joey and some of his former MLB teammates were way worse than him:
“My brother, I’m going to throw him under the bus but he was to the extreme,” Cora said. “So I learned a little bit from him. But I was very routine-oriented. I played with some guys that they were worse."
But beyond the beard, it all had to do with finally making adjustments to the lineup. The struggling Trevor Story fell in the order and J.D. Martínez made sure to deliver:
"Flip-flopping the big boys, see what happens," Cora said. "We've got some capable guys, and they're not swinging the bat well. Hopefully, moving some people around helps."
Story is too good not to turn things around but in the meantime, Cora will have to steak with the formula that works, regardless of if he shaves or not.
