When Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez mocked Carlos Correa after getting him out, Red Sox manager and former Astros bench coach Alex Cora stopped him.
Baseball’s “unwritten rules” are unofficial codes of good sportsmanship. Essential to nearly all of them is the notion that players should not gloat, whether it’s after hitting a walk-off home run or pitching a batter out.
So when Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez had the chance to get out Astros shortstop Carlos Correa from the plate, he couldn’t help but gloat a little. His way of doing that was tapping an imaginary wristwatch, a reference to Correa’s home run celebration in Game 1.
Sweet as revenge may have been, Red Sox manager Alex Cora had no time for Rodriguez’s response.
“Hey!” Cora yelled from the dugout. “No! No!”
Alex Cora shouts at Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez for gloating on the mound
The Red Sox, who are currently leading the ALCS round with 2-1, just took home a resounding 12-3 win at Fenway Park. Win or not, Cora believes that his players shouldn’t act that way and taunt the opposing team.
“Don’t do that,” Cora explained after the win. “Because we don’t act that way. We just show up, we play, and we move on, and he knows. I let him know. We don’t have to do that. If we’re looking for motivation outside of what we’re trying to accomplish, we’re in the wrong business. The only motivation we have is to win four games against them and move on to the next round.”
Although Cora seemed upset with Rodriguez in the game, he reiterated that he wasn’t. The message was received by Rodriguez, who reflected on his response and said he intended to apologize to Correa.
“He just told me don’t do that,” Rodriguez said. “Like I said earlier, it was something that was part of the moment. But he just told me, like, I mean, we don’t do that here. Stay humble. Just go out there and play hard every time. I will apologize to Correa if I see him in person because that’s not something I normally do, and it was just part of the game. That’s it.”
But it seems that Cora and Correa have different ideas of how the game is supposed to be played. While Cora upholds the classic mentality of sticking to superior play, Correa believes that baseball should trend in an edgier direction.
Whether baseball will follow the NFL trend of banning taunting or embrace it the way NBA players have over decades might play out for the rest of the Series.