If Carlos Beltran is in the broadcast booth for any Yankees-Red Sox games this year, he’ll have one of his biggest supporters in the Boston dugout. 

Alex Cora, who came back to manage the Red Sox in 2021 after being suspended for 2020 for his role in the Astros’ 2017 sign-stealing scheme that Beltran was also involved in, is glad to see his good friend make his own return to the game this season as a YES Network analyst. 

“For him to be back in the game, it means the world,” Cora, the former Astros bench coach, said Thursday at Yankee Stadium as his team prepared for Opening Day. “As a friend, I wish him the best. I know it’s been very difficult the last two years. We’ve had some great conversations and he knows I’m here for him. He knew the whole time I was there for him, which is very important. Not only for him, but for [wife] Jessica and the kids. I know how hard the whole process was. 

“Fair or unfair, we’re not going to get into that. But the fact that he decided to get back into the game, it means the world and I’m proud of him.” 

Beltran had been out of the game since 2020, when he lost the job he had just gotten as Mets manager in the fallout from the Astros scandal being revealed. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred pointed to Cora and Beltran as two of the key minds in the scheme, and while Beltran avoided the suspension that Cora and then-Astros manager A.J. Hinch received, it still cost him his job with the Mets. 

A year after Cora and Hinch returned as managers, Beltran — who was the only player mentioned in MLB’s report — was hired by YES to work games in the broadcast booth. His regular-season debut is set to come later this month, though he made waves in his only spring training game Monday when he seemed to imply that the Yankees had signed Aaron Judge to an extension, which he later corrected. 

Cora, who served as an MLB commentator for ESPN from 2013-2016, said Beltran does not have an easy job. 

“I wish him nothing but the best,” Cora said. “Hopefully he doesn’t crush me on TV.”