That Time Joey Cora Got Stabbed
Mariners-Padres history takes a shocking turn. Plus, a fun Joey Cora story as a palate cleanser.
It's time for 2025 Vedder Cup, and in honor of the hallowed geographic rivalry between the Seattle Mariners and the San Diego Padres, I continue looking at connections between the two teams. Last year, we investigated that time the owner of the Mariners bought the Padres at the same time:
Amanda Lane Cumming
Today, we're going to look at a beloved Mariner who began his career with the Padres, and an incident that almost killed him.
The Padres drafted Joey Cora in the first round of the 1985 draft. He made his major league debut a couple years later in 1987. He moved on to the Chicago White Sox, before landing in Seattle in 1995.
Joey Cora played baseball with his whole heart. He was very definition of scrappy. He was feisty. He was determined. He fought and fought and fought on the baseball diamond and in the batter’s box. He was often described as the spark plug of the Mariners’ offense. He cared, deeply.
That’s why when Mariners fans think of Joey Cora, the first image we think of is him sitting in the dugout, face buried in a towel, sobbing along with us when the Mariners were eliminated from the 1995 ALCS.
We also think of him bunting and evading the tag for a base hit to lead off the bottom of the 11th inning in the 1995 ALDS against the New York Yankees. He reached base and sparked the inning that culminated in Edgar Martinez hitting The Double and Ken Griffey Jr flying around the bases to score the winning run. Cora, of course, scored the lesser sung tying run on that famous double.
Maybe you remember him at the 1997 All-Star Game. I’m convinced that no player has ever appreciated or enjoyed being named an All-Star more than Joey Cora.
To say that Joey was beloved in Seattle during his time here doesn’t quite go far enough. It was a true love affair between Joey and the fans.
And *ominous music and deep, serious voice * it almost didn’t happen.
*Regular voice, clears throat * Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?
Joey Cora grew up in Caguas, Puerto Rico. Although major league scouts were aware of him when he graduated high school, his family wanted him to get an education. He initially went to the University of Puerto Rico, but Vanderbilt’s baseball coach noticed him playing in a tournament in Ohio and offered him a scholarship.
After his sophomore year at Vanderbilt, Joey played in the Cape Cod League, earning the league’s MVP award that summer. After his junior year, he was named to All-SEC Team and named a second team All-American (losing out on first team honors to Barry Larkin at shortstop, the position he played in college.).
In the June 1985 amateur draft, he was selected by the defending National League pennant winning San Diego Padres in the first round and 23rd overall. His professional career began in the short season Northwest League for Spokane, where he got off to a good start, slashing .324/.437/.465. But a knee injury ended the year early for him.
His knee recovered and he jumped up to AA Beaumont in the Texas League for the 1986 season. Joey continued to play well. For the year he’d slash .305/.397/.381 and walk 47 times against 28 strikeouts. He was facing some challenges that year. He learned in early June that his father had colon cancer. He left the team to return to Puerto Rico to be with his family for a week (his dad would recover). When he got back to Beaumont he, understandably, wasn't feeling like himself.
On June 21, Cora was hitless in a game his Beaumont Golden Gators lost 1-0 to the San Antonio Dodgers in San Antonio. Following the game he was the first one out of the locker room, anxious to get on the bus back to the motel because he was going to meet up one of San Antonio’s players for dinner that night. He made his way toward the bus, where he saw three men throwing cans at the Golden Gators’ bus.
One newspaper account1 has Cora telling the men to knock it off. Others say a handful of teammates were with him and harsher words were exchanged. The men left and “I thought it was over then,” Cora said a year later, “but the guys came back and I’m the one they picked out."2
The men who left, came back with seven others. The players were still waiting by the bus and were drawn into arguments with the group. The confrontation swiftly became physical and violent. A couple players were restrained by the group of men and Cora said “One guy held me from behind while another guy stabbed me.”
He was stabbed twice in the stomach and left forearm.
His teammates managed to run off the group of men and he was tended to by team trainers until an ambulance arrived. Cora was rushed to the hospital where doctors needed to remove a portion of his small intestine due to the damage. He was listed in stable condition, but he narrowly avoided a much more serious injury.
Beaumont manager Steve Smith remembered years later, “We thought he was dead.”3 The team and Cora were told that if the he had been hit an inch higher, he wouldn’t have made it out of San Antonio alive.
Joey spent the next 15 days in the hospital in San Antonio. His teammates were able to visit and stay with him for the first couple days, but a minor league baseball schedule stops for no man, and after they left he was alone, wondering if he would ever play baseball again.
He ended up only missing 8 weeks of the season, coming back near the end of August. Importantly for his development, he was healthy enough to play winter ball that year. The newspapers weren’t worried that the stabbing would hold Cora back. The North County Times wrote at the end of the season that “The Padres are extremely high on 21-year-old second baseman Joey Cora,” and began looking forward to a battle in spring training between Cora and Bip Roberts for the second base spot on the Padres.4 No one seemed to doubt that he could make the jump from AA to the major leagues.
He arrived at spring training 1987 with hopes of making the team. His play on the field was top notch, but he was still dealing with the emotional aftermath and people noticed changes in him. Padres manager Larry Bowa noted that Cora was less chatty and outgoing than he had been the year before. Beaumont manager Smith commented, “I really saw a change in him after that.”5
Cora himself said in the spring on 1987 of the stabbing, “It changed me completely, emotionally. When I see a crowd, I just get out of the way. I’ve never liked being in the spotlight and now I like it much less. I want to be me. I want to leave the park unnoticed, have a normal life.”6
Joey won the second base job with the big league Padres that spring, beginning his major league career. Though his path through baseball had its share of bumps, if there was a silver lining to the stabbing, it’s that he knew he had faced worse before. “I figure if I can get over that, I can get through anything.”7
He stopped talking to reporters about the incident because he had moved on and didn’t want to dwell on the past. A decade later, following his first season with the Mariners, he talked about it one last time around the 10th anniversary of that fateful night. Asked how it had changed and affected him, Joey said, “I learned not to get stabbed.”8
To the extent that it can be avoided, that’s solid life advice.
More Joey Cora Fun
Several years ago when that Michael Jordan docuseries came out, I remembered that in the midst of a hitting slump Joey Cora began wearing Michael Jordan cologne and turned his slump into a hitting streak. I started looking for information on that and came across a much longer, incredibly entertaining Joey Cora-Michael Jordan history.
You can take a read of it here if you're so inclined:
Amanda Lane
Last year I got an email from someone who read the story and it helped clear up a mystery he'd been pondering since 1994. When the writer was 8 years old he attended a Michael Jordan baseball game. Jordan was tossing some of his used and broken equipment into the stands and the writer caught a bat. He wondered why in the world Michael Jordan would have a Joey Cora bat, and tried to convince skeptical friends through the years that he did in fact get a bat from Michael Jordan. When he came across the story, the mystery was solved and he finally has some backup for his story.
Writing that story was a lot of fun for me, and I love this little epilogue it got.
Notes
- Henderson, Martin. "Cora still has scars of attack." North County Times, May 12, 1987, 21.
- Maffei, John. "Joey Cora: Is he ready to make the team, or is he a year away as Padre 2nd baseman?" North County Times, March 2, 1987, 17.
- Sherwin, Bob. "Sports". The Seattle Times, August 6, 1996, C1.
- Maffei, John. "Roberts still has much to learn." North County Times, October 10, 1986, 22.
- Sherwin. "Sports."
- Henderson. "Cora still has scars."
- Maffei. "Joey Cora: Is he ready."
- Sherwin. "Sports."
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