By the time last Thursday came around, Jarren Duran was presented with what was thought to be the return of his normal existence. He had served a two-game suspension for a homophobic slur directed at a fan four days before and was now being allowed to play baseball once again.
But nothing seemed normal for Duran.
His uncertainty and uneasiness stretched to different parts of his baseball-playing existence. The clubhouse. The field. And even outside the park, where Duran would routinely sign autographs after games. This was uncharted territory for the 27-year-old.
Fortunately for Duran, there was someone who had some familiarity with dealing with such a dynamic. That would be his manager.
While Alex Cora's controversy - being suspended by Major League Baseball for his role in the Houston Astros' 2017 cheating scandal - was by no means identical to Duran's misstep, there were enough similarities for Cora to help his player navigate what awaited.
It was why a quick conversation out on the Fenway Park field went a long way to guiding the outfielder through challenges that aren't going away any time soon.
"We just talked," Cora told WEEI.com. "The one thing, and this is totally different, they are two different situations but at the end the way you cope with it is very similar. The more genuine and transparent you are the better it is going to be. It's not about acceptance, but it's about you have to keep going. He's not going to stop playing baseball and for him to be able to breath and do his thing, you have to keep doing the things you were doing in the past like signing autographs and being present for the fans. Somebody is going to get on you. Somebody is going to say they are disappointed and that's the moment you say, 'Yes, but I will be fine. I disappointed now but with time you will be proud of me because I will do everything possible not to make it better, because that's the wrong choice of words, but to just to keep going.'
"In my case, I always said there are 50 percent of people who accepted me and 50 percent who don't forgive me. And I get it. But one thing for sure is that 50 percent they can't say I haven't been apologetic or I haven't talked about the subject. I have been very open about it. I told him, 'Be you. Not everybody is going to accept you but one thing for sure from now on you can make it for people to respect you.'"
Cora is constantly reminded of his miscue even all these years later, with some places like Los Angeles and Houston serving up a healthier dose of venom than others.
That is most likely going to be the case for Duran, as well.
But the Sox manager learned early on that the best way to deal with the self-inflicted uneasiness is to tackle it head-on, which was what Duran ultimately did.
Not too long after that first-day-back uncertainty, Duran could be found interacting with the fans - both at Fenway and then on the road in Baltimore and Houston - as much if not more than any other Red Sox player.
Whether or not the approach was the cause, but starting Friday, on the field, Duran looked like the dynamic player he had displayed for most of the 2024 season. There were three hits Friday night. A pair of stolen bases over the weekend. And Monday night's leadoff home run in Houston.
It was a dramatically different image than was portrayed those first couple of games back.
"I told him, 'Sign autographs. Do your thing. Just be you.' The way I see it, don't make one bad decision dictate who you are," Cora said. "We all make mistakes. We all do. The thing is on this platform our mistakes, yeah, they should be magnified because people are holding us to this standard. What he did was wrong and he knows it. Now we have to let it breath and let the kid keep getting better and do the things he is supposed to do to get better.
"The first few days you don't know, and now he knows. It's going to get louder. We're going to go to places where they are going to be loud and they are going to bring it up. His job is to cancel the noise and keep doing the things you are doing personally to improve."
So, how did Cora formulate the plan passed on to Duran?
"Honestly, just being at home. Going to the supermarket after the lockdown when everything opened up my biggest fear was not taking it to my family. I was the one who (expletive) up. It wasn't them," he said. "They had no idea what was going on. If I go to a restaurant or I go to the grocery store with my family, don't do it. There were some people that would say some stuff and I was like, 'Yeah, I did it. I will be better.' That was when I realized that was the best way of doing it. Don't hide, because you have to keep on living. We made a huge mistake, yeah, we did. But we have to still keep going. I think with time that's what I did. There are people who sometimes when I talk about the topic five or six years later they are like, 'You don't have to talk about it.' I'm like, 'I will talk about it will always be there.' It's going to be a conversation with the boys probably soon. They are getting to the point where they understand a lot of stuff. It will always be there.
"People (at the ballpark), they remind me all the time. When we went to LA it was nonstop. That's part of my baseball life. It's away from my life in a sense. It's not like they don't bring it up anymore, but I feel comfortable where I'm at."
It's a feeling - and mentality - Cora is now trying to pass on to his player.
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