BOSTON -- Alex Cora has been a Didi Gregorius fan for so long, it once got him in trouble with that segment of Yankees fans that worship Derek Jeter — otherwise known as all of them.
Speaking before Thursday's series opener with New York, Cora relayed a memorable experience with having his words taken out of context in an internet headline.
"It's funny because on national TV like five years ago, I said that Didi Gregorius is one of the reasons the Yankees took off and I got crushed," Cora said. "That was the year after Jeter retired. They took it like I was pushing aside Derek and that wasn't the case."
While Cora recalled the comment coming a year after Jeter's 2014 retirement, he more likely said it in 2016, when Gregorius reached 20 homers for the first time.
"He's a good player, man," Cora said. "Very physical, kind of like Xander (Bogaerts). Same deal. Just physical. Not only the offense. Defensively, he's been really good the way he… one of the games in London, the way they finished one of the games with his play. I think it was Sam (Travis) that hit the ball up the middle. They turned the double play. . . . He's a solid player. Offensively, he's transformed his game. He's a power-hitting shortstop and he's been good for the Yankees."
So what did Cora learn from the hubbub over his praise of Gregorius being misconstrued as hatred of Jeter?
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"I think that's when I learned about the media," he said. "What I said, all of a sudden they put it on the website, and the title was like — I can't even remember — it was kind of like, 'Cora crushes Jeter,' and all of a sudden my phone was going crazy. So that's when I learned that you (reporters) have somebody else behind you guys that they decide to put the title on the thing. Yeah. It was part of the learning part of it, so when you get a big league managing job, don't get mad at people, because there's somebody else behind them (writing headlines)."
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