McAdam: Managers Cora, Roberts take center stage in World Series matchup

As fate would have it, Alex Cora seems to be traveling down a reception line in this, his first postseason as a major league manager, getting reacquainted with people whose paths he has crossed over the duration of his professional baseball career.

First, in the American League Division Series, he could look across the field and find, in the other dugout, his one-time ESPN teammate Aaron Boone, also freshly minted as a big league manager with the New York Yankees.

In the recent American League Championship Series, he managed against his onetime mentor, A.J. Hinch, for whom he served as bench coach only a year ago with the Houston Astros.

And now, on the eve of the World Series, he's getting ready to manage against the Los Angeles Dodgers' Dave Roberts, whom he first met in winter ball nearly 20 years ago and was his former Dodgers teammate.

It's as if the baseball gods are staging an episode of "This is Your Life'' for the entire month of October for Cora.

It might seem from the outside that these confluences, these renewals of friendships at the most important time of year, have created some awkwardness for Cora, or, at the very least, some mixed emotions. But he insists that isn't the case.

"At the end of the day,'' Cora said, "we like each other, we're friends and we respect each other. But at the end, (Roberts and the Dodgers) want to win four to win the World Series and we feel the same. We want to do the same thing.''

In other words: This is no time to get soft, just because you first got to know the opposing manager when you played together in winter ball in 1999. And came up with him in the Dodgers' system. And comforted him when he was crushed by the news that he had been traded to the -- wait for it ...-- Red Sox at the trade deadline in 2004.

And if that wasn't enough connection, there was this: when Roberts got hired to manage the Dodgers after the 2015 season, he reached out to Cora about being part of the Los Angeles coaching staff.

"I was like, 'No, I'm good where I'm at right now,''' recalled Cora Monday, "because of the situation with ESPN, only working 70 days a year and being able to fly back to Puerto Rico. My daughter, she was growing up and I wanted to be part of it.''

Roberts, strangely, didn't figure himself to be a managerial candidate following his playing career, but it happened that was the path he took.

"Even when he was playing,'' said Roberts, "he had visions of doing this. Me, not so much, but we didn't talk about it a whole lot. We talked about a lot of strategies and being in the game for the long haul and just loving the game of baseball.''

Now, here they as the last two managers still working in 2018. Roberts has skillfully directed the Dodgers to three straight playoff appearances, with back-to-back National League pennants. Cora, in his first year in the Red Sox dugout, led them a record-shattering 108-win season, then oversaw a team which first knocked off a 100-win team (Yankees), then unseated the defending world champions (Astros).

From the start of October, Cora has managed the Red Sox with a deftness belying his youth and relative inexperience.

In the ALDS win over the Yankees, Cora seemed to exhibit an almost uncanny sense of which players to sit and which to play. When he opted to insert Rafael Devers, Christian Vazquez, and Brock Holt into the lineup for Game 3, all three came through with big games, led by Holt hitting for the cycle and knocking in five runs.

He's also drawn raves for his bullpen deployment -- utilizing starters Rick Porcello and Nathan Eovaldi in relief; showing faith in closer Craig Kimbrel until his penchant for tipping pitches was corrected -- and finding the best possible matchups.

But Cora's contributions aren't just about strategy.

"More than anything,'' remarked Red Sox Game 1 starter Chris Sale, "he's just brought consistency. He's the same guy in the first inning as he is in the ninth inning of a 10-1 ballgame or a 3-3 ballgame. I think that's the overall thing, as players, that we take from him. It's just his composure -- ninth inning, bases loaded, one out in a one-run ballgame and he's sitting there eating seeds, doing the same thing as a 10-1 ballgame in the fourth inning.

"I think that goes over very well with us as players: If he's not panicking, why should we? If he's calm, cool and collected, so should we. I think that's kind of been the overall consensus throughout the year. He's been a good leader and we've been able to feed off his vibes, and he's had nothing but good vibes the whole year.''

Roberts gets the same sort of backing from his players, especially now that he's guided some of them through the postseason pressure-cooker three years in a row now.

And now, here they are, nearly two decades after they first met, managing against each other in the World Series.