BREAKING: Alex Cora admits Red Sox were inches from Shohei Ohtani, revealing one mistake that changed baseball history forever
The silence finally cracked.
For more than a year, Boston baseball lived with the same question echoing through Fenway like a bad hop: How close were the Red Sox to landing Shohei Ohtani?
This week, Red Sox manager Alex Cora offered his first public answer, and it was not the one Boston wanted to hear.
“We were closer than people think,” Cora said, pausing before adding, “maybe it was one decision that changed everything.”
Inside the Boston Red Sox organization, the pursuit of Shohei Ohtani had been treated like a state secret. Executives whispered. Scouts traveled quietly. Analysts ran projections at midnight. Boston believed, for a brief stretch of time, that the deal of the century could belong to them.
Instead, Ohtani became the face of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Red Sox became the franchise that “almost” was.
What changed.
According to team sources, Boston’s package checked multiple boxes that Ohtani’s camp prioritized: player development, medical resources, global marketing, and an organizational willingness to innovate. But negotiations often collapse over details no one ever sees.
Cora would not say precisely what the “one mistake” was. But he acknowledged that timing played a critical role, hinting that a window opened and closed faster than expected.
“In this league,” he said, “you don’t lose players by years. You lose them by hours.”
Multiple executives around the game believe Boston hesitated at a key crossroads. Whether it was term length, financial structure, or support roles attached to the deal, something blinked.
And in Major League Baseball, blinking costs generational talent.
The aftermath has been loud.
Fans called it a failure of ambition. Analysts labeled it caution masquerading as strategy. And others argue Boston did the right thing, refusing to mortgage flexibility for one superstar, even one who might rewrite history.
But Cora’s words reopened the wound.
Because it was not about money.
It was about belief.
“For players like that,” Cora admitted, “they don’t want to feel wanted. They want to feel trusted with the future.”
The reality now is Boston is watching from the outside as Ohtani reshapes October from Dodger blue, while Fenway holds echoing hypotheticals.
Could Boston have won championships with him.
Would they have become the global epicenter of baseball again.
Cora did not speculate.
But his expression said enough.
Inside baseball circles, the admission changes perception. Boston was not absent. Boston was present. And that makes the loss sharper.
This was not fantasy.
It was inches.
And inches are the cruelest measurement in sports.
Because Boston didn’t just miss out on Ohtani.
They missed out on becoming something else entirely.
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