The people behind the sign-stealing scandal that tarnished the Houston Astros’ championship in 2017, cost three managers their jobs and consumed the entire baseball world for months want to move on. The rest of the sport won’t let them. Not yet, anyway.

Chicago White Sox relief pitcher Ryan Tepera made that abundantly clear during the American League Division Series, when he all but accused the Astros of still cheating.

“They’ve...

The people behind the sign-stealing scandal that tarnished the Houston Astros’ championship in 2017, cost three managers their jobs and consumed the entire baseball world for months want to move on. The rest of the sport won’t let them. Not yet, anyway.

Chicago White Sox relief pitcher Ryan Tepera made that abundantly clear during the American League Division Series, when he all but accused the Astros of still cheating.

“They’ve obviously had a reputation of doing some sketchy stuff over there,” Tepera said, noting how much worse the Astros’ batters fared on the road after playing the previous two games in Houston. “It’s just, we can say that it’s a little bit of a difference.”

Tepera’s comments annoyed the Astros. Manager Dusty Baker said he “had never even heard his name before we played the White Sox” and pointedly quoted an Eric Clapton lyric, “Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself.” After the Astros polished off the White Sox to advance to the next round of the playoffs, shortstop Carlos Correa fired back, “if you’re going to talk s—t about other teams, state facts.”

OK, then, a fact: As much as the Astros would like to put the past behind them, they will not escape their least-favorite topic in the AL championship series, a matchup with the Boston Red Sox that sent Alex Cora back to the scene of the crime. The teams split two games at Minute Maid Park and now head to Boston for Game 3 on Monday. 

Cora served as Houston’s bench coach in 2017, before assuming the position of Boston’s manager the next year and guiding the Red Sox to a title. When the Astros’ rule-breaking came to light, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred highlighted Cora as a ringleader of the scheme, ultimately suspending him for the entire 2020 campaign. Cora understands as well as anybody that the stain might never fully disappear. 

“For those that think it’s in the past, no, we live it every day,” Cora said Thursday. “I live it every day. We made a mistake, and we’re paying the price.”

Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora, from left, Enrique Hernández and Kyle Schwarber during ALCS introductions.

Photo: David J. Phillip/Associated Press

Like Cora, former Astros manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow received yearlong bans. The players evaded discipline after Manfred granted them immunity in exchange for their cooperation in the investigation. Carlos Beltrán, the lone Astros player that Manfred singled out for his involvement, lost his job as skipper of the New York Mets before he even reported to his first spring training. 

But Cora didn’t stay out of favor for long, even after Manfred found evidence that the 2018 Red Sox also illegally stole signs, although in a less egregious way than the Astros. Following a last-place finish during the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign, the Red Sox brought Cora back, the ban merely a brief interruption in what looks like the beginning of a wildly successful managerial career. 

Even from exile, Cora stayed in touch with his former charges. Shortstop Xander Bogaerts said he talked to Cora “a lot” during the 2020 season, when Ron Roenicke was Boston’s manager.

“If he told me to run through that wall, I’d believe he had something there to make sure it would fall for me,” Red Sox reliever Garrett Whitlock said. “That’s the kind of leader he is.”

Cora inherited a Red Sox club this season widely viewed as the fourth-best in its own division, not one with realistic playoff aspirations against competitors like the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees. With Cora at the helm, the Red Sox won 92 games in the regular season, dismantled the Yankees in the wild-card game and then authored a stunning upset of the Rays in the American League Divisional Series. 

Now they sit on the precipice of going to the World Series, and the players cite Cora as a reason why.

“Maybe we don’t have the stacked names like some of the other teams have, but in some way he just makes us believe that this is possible,” Bogaerts said.

Regardless of Cora’s role in the Astros’ scheme—which involved banging on a trash can to relay the opposing catchers’ signals to hitters in real time—it didn’t stop the Red Sox from immediately welcoming him back. The same went for Hinch, who after a year away returned as the manager of an up-and-coming Detroit Tigers. team. Though they went just 77-85, Hinch guided the Tigers to their best record since 2016, and they showed promise in the second half of the season, when they went 37-34.

Not everybody received such forgiveness. Luhnow, the GM who transformed the worst team in the majors into a perennial powerhouse, remains outside the industry, and for now that appears unlikely to change. Now led by GM James Click and Baker, the Astros have qualified for the ALCS for the fifth consecutive season. (Beltrán, whose stint as Mets manager lasted all of two months, could emerge as a candidate for their current managerial vacancy.)

But even if baseball has moved on enough to let someone like Cora back into the club, fans certainly haven’t. The Astros faced ferocious booing everywhere they went all season long, with crowds around the country venting their anger after Covid-19 restrictions kept them away from the ballpark last season. Many of the Astros’ top contributors from 2017 still play for them, like Correa, third baseman Alex Bregman and second baseman José Altuve. 

In many ways, the reaction to the Astros bothers Cora, if only because jeers in their direction reflect on him. Given the stakes of this series with the Astros, the Red Sox faithful at Fenway Park this week won’t respond kindly to the Astros, in spite of their manager’s place at the center of it.

“It’s uncomfortable because I know that when they get good or they scream at them, I’m there,” Cora said. “I was part of that.”

Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora, hugs Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker Jr.

Photo: David J. Phillip/Associated Press

No evidence exists of any continued malfeasance by the Astros—or the Red Sox, whose own illicit actions resulted in a season-long suspension for J.T. Watkins, a low-level staffer who operated the team’s replay system. 

Despite Tepera’s intimation that the Astros swung and missed more on the road, they actually had the lowest strikeout rate in the sport in both home and away games this season. They also had the highest OPS in baseball on the road, compared with just the seventh-best at home. The team with the best OPS at home? The Red Sox.

“This is what happens when you cheat,” former MLB pitcher Jerry Blevins wrote on Twitter recently. “Whether you do it again or not, there will always be doubt.”

Write to Jared Diamond at jared.diamond@wsj.com