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From today's NY Times...
By Deeds and Words, Cora Challenges Mets
By BEN SHPIGEL
WASHINGTON — The worst lineup Alex Cora said he had ever seen won three of four games late last summer. He batted eighth or ninth for a Red Sox team playing without the injured Mike Lowell, Julio Lugo, J. D. Drew and Kevin Youkilis, and with its replacement third baseman, Jed Lowrie, battling a fractured wrist.
“I don’t know how we did it,” Cora said. “At one point we had Dustin Pedroia hitting fourth. I mean, yeesh. But we didn’t care. We were just like, let’s go. Why can’t we do it? Why not us? And that’s what you do, man.”
Excuses were not tolerated in Boston, where Cora won a World Series title in 2007, and he expects the same fortitude from his new teammates on the Mets. Whenever the Mets’ deluge of injuries is broached, Cora changes the subject, a verbal eye roll. He is on record saying that if people disagree with him they “don’t belong in this clubhouse,” a remark issued in Pittsburgh on June 1, the day before he was activated from the disabled list.
Cora spent the minimum 15 days on the D.L., the torn ligament in his right thumb having healed enough for him to take over for Jose Reyes, out indefinitely with hamstring troubles, at shortstop and in the leadoff spot. Wearing a splint every game, Cora packs his thumb in ice afterward, occasionally takes some anti-inflammatory medication, and he is good to go.
“I love that,” third baseman David Wright said. “That’s the true measure of a guy I have the ultimate respect for: a guy who plays hurt, doesn’t go about announcing it and just goes out there and does his job and does it well. I haven’t known him long, but Alex is quickly becoming one of my all-time favorites.”
Cora’s thumb has become a symbol for a team that, at various times, has been criticized for a lack of gumption. General Manager Omar Minaya said he signed Cora as much for his swagger and baseball acumen as for his middle-infield talents, and Cora’s toughness will be tested in the difficult week ahead. Before heading to Yankee Stadium, the Mets play three games at Citi Field against first-place Philadelphia, which will pitch three straight left-handed starters: J. A. Happ, Cole Hamels and Jamie Moyer. Since returning, Cora, a left-handed hitter, has not started in either of the Mets’ games against lefties, but Manger Jerry Manuel said he would need Cora’s patience, solid defense and cerebral approach every day.
“I respond to Cora as though he is one of our core players,” Manuel said. “I ask him every day how he feels. Are you getting any swelling? Are you having any issues with this? That’s how important I think he is for us.”
Cora hurt his thumb when he slid headfirst into second base on May 17; the injury was initially called a sprain. The next day in Los Angeles, Cora was examined and had a magnetic resonance imaging exam that revealed the tear. The results surprised him, he said, because he had planned to play that night. He even went to Dodger Stadium and tested his thumb, seeing if he could throw without discomfort.
“I guarantee you that if I hadn’t gotten an M.R.I., I wouldn’t have gone on the D.L.,” said Cora, who will have surgery after the season. “Mentally, I was ready to go. I just thought it was jammed. No big deal.”
Doctors told him to wear a splint for 10 days, and if the pain had not subsided by then, he would have to have surgery that would have sidelined him for about two months. After about four days, Cora said he knew he would return soon, and a three-day rehabilitation assignment with Class AAA Buffalo confirmed it. Now, he says he hardly notices the splint, which he fits beneath his batting glove, and his teammates said it was impossible to tell he was wearing one from his performance.
He has fielded every ground ball, made every throw and turned every double play with no regard for his thumb. In the top of the seventh inning Sunday, he singled, stole second and scored on a single by Wright. In the bottom half, he made a fully extended diving stab of Josh Bard’s grounder, landing on his right hand. The other day, Cora instinctively barehanded a ball. “I was so into the game that I didn’t even feel it,” he said.
Bard, who played with Cora in Cleveland and in Boston, said: “Sometimes a guy like Alex, who’s been a backup for a while, gets a little bit slighted on his talent, but he is a tremendous infielder. To me, the more you’re around guys that have lasted in this game, if you can play, you play. And that’s how Alex has always been.”
That reputation was forged with the Dodgers, for whom Cora played at least 109 games in five straight seasons, from 2000 to 2004. It was polished in a six-month stop in Cleveland, where he started to realize that “the guys on the bench in the big leagues are there only because somebody decided they’re not starters,” and during his memorable time in Boston, where he mentored players like Pedroia and Lowrie and added valuable middle-infield depth.
“When you come from an organization that is used to winning and you see the obstacles that they had to endure, it teaches you,” said the first-base coach, Luis Alicea, who held that position with Boston in 2007 and 2008. “In his sense, he’s trying to show that he’s done this before, he’s been here before, don’t panic.”
Manuel said he considered Cora “instrumental” in the development of the prospect Fernando Martinez, who could benefit from watching how Cora approaches his at-bats. Only Wright (4.23) has seen a higher average of pitches per plate appearance than Cora (4.12), who has twice as many walks as strikeouts (12 to 6) and once had an epic 18-pitch at-bat: in a 2004 game he fouled off 14 straight pitches from Matt Clement before blasting one of his 34 career home runs.
Determination is just one quality cited when baseball people describe why Cora, like his older brother, Joey, the Chicago White Sox bench coach, may someday make an excellent major league manager. At 33, Cora does not plan to embark on that phase of his career for a while. But, he was asked, if he were the manager and a player told him that he would play despite a torn thumb ligament, how would he respond? Cora shrugged.
“To me, that’s normal,” Cora said. “That’s just how you should play.”
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