Alvarez leads L.A. to RBI title
Jose Alvarez went all seven innings, giving up four hits and one earned run, to lead Los Angeles to the championship of the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) World Series with a 5-2 victory over Detroit on Monday at Angel Stadium.
“Jose was gutsy,” Los Angeles Manager Joey Aragon said. “He’s a competitor.”
But Alvarez and his team, the Dodgers, got off to a slow start.
Detroit scored in the bottom of the first inning. After Mark Brown reached on an error, Robert Cooper lined a run-scoring double down the right-field line. Detroit extended its lead to 2-0 in the second inning when Brandon Bell hit a home run over the 400-foot sign in center field.
After that, Alvarez, a right-hander from Los Angeles Roosevelt High, kept Detroit at bay.
“I just tried to keep the ball low, find my balance point,” Alvarez said. “My curveball and my changeup worked effectively.”
In the third inning, the Dodgers tied the score with a two-out rally. Adrian Williams singled to center field, moved to second base on an errant pickoff throw and scored on a single by Cameron Hart. Hart moved to second on a balk and hustled in from there when an easy grounder toward first base hit by Francisco Sixtos was mishandled by Detroit.
Another Detroit error enabled Los Angeles to take the lead for good in the sixth inning. With runners on first and second and two outs, James Gonzalez drove a ball into the gap that left fielder Brown dropped after making a nice run for it. Both runners scored to give Los Angeles a 4-2 advantage.
Hart, who was two for four with four runs batted in, had a run-scoring double in the seventh inning to give Los Angeles its final margin of victory.
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