BOSTON (AP) — Red Sox manager Alex Cora wanted his twin 7-year-old sons to meet the Yankees’ Aaron Judge, the biggest star of his team’s AL East foe.
“They were like ‘No, no. He’s a rival,’’’ the Boston manager recalled.
Cora persisted, mentioning players that have spent time with both teams, like Alex Verdugo.
Xander and Isander Cora got to meet the 6-foot-7 All-Star before Boston’s 4-3 win on Saturday night. The brothers wore Boston’s new alternate jerseys in Fenway green. Cora took a photo of the boys with Judge, who gave one of them a set of batting gloves.
“I only had one pair on me, so that’s all I could do,” Judge said, smiling.
“We’re rivals when we step on that field for 7 o’clock,” Judge told The Associated Press on Sunday morning. “He’s a dad. He’s got two sons that are big baseball fans, so I get the chance to meet them and talk a little baseball with them. … That’s another cool part of the job.”
Cora had been hoping for a while to set up the meeting.
“Last week, I texted him and said: ’We need to do this, and he was like: ‘Just let me know,”’ the manager said.
“I’m a fan of all these guys. These guys, they kick our butt and sometimes we do it to them,” Cora said. “At the end, we’re a fraternity. I’ve been watching him since 2017. I think last year, we started communicating. I’m in awe with everything that goes on with him because it’s (Shohei) Ohtani and Judge. They’re the faces of baseball. The way he conducts himself on and off the field.”
Cora said one of his sons is outspoken and the other is shy. Cora shared details of the get-together with his wife, Angelica.
“They were kind of like quiet in the beginning and then they were comfortable,” he said, before breaking into a laugh as he finished the story. “They called Angelica after the fact and said: ‘He’s shy. They called him shy.’’
Judge was marking his first Father’s Day as a dad. His wife, Samantha, gave birth to Nora Rose on Jan. 27.
“Definitely, being a dad now, I look at it a little different,” the Yankees outfielder said of the meeting and signing autographs for fans after batting practice. “Just try to take maybe five minutes, six minutes out of my day. That’s a memory they get to have for a lifetime. Even for me, those are special moments I get to share with fans.”
Cora’s boys can expect a present. Another set of batting gloves, so there is one for each.
“He said he was going to send it,” Cora said. “They said: ‘He didn’t sign it.’ I said: ‘Don’t worry about it. You got the picture.’
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