Kyle Schwarber saves the day for young ballplayer
Mar 21, 2016, 3:05 PM
It was a trip of a lifetime for Jose Alvarado.
A trip that found the young Chicago ballplayer in Mesa with his junior all-star team to meet the Chicago Cubs and play in an exhibition game.
But what happened to Alvarado during this trip is something that will last a lifetime, and for Cubs catcher Kyle Schwarber, earn him a fan for life.
It started before he arrived in Mesa, were he was catching a bullpen session and the pitch sailed through the webbing of his mitt.
Alvarado is a catcher on his junior all star team, which is sponsored by the Cubs and is part of MLB’s Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (R.B.I.) program. The team arrived in Arizona to hang out with the Cubs and play an exhibition game with the Diamondbacks’ sponsored R.B.I team.
The only problem for Alvarado when he arrived in Arizona is he did so without his catcher’s mitt.
Schwarber noticed the problem and let him borrow his mitt, which was a game-used.
Afterwards, as Alvarado was trying to seek out Schwarber to return his glove, the Cubs catcher found him. He asked Alvarado to follow him to the clubhouse, where he gave the young catcher one of his brand-new black mitts with his name written on the side.
“It’s amazing,” Alvarado told Yahoo Sports, “that he handed me a glove twice today.”
Added Schwarber: “I remember when I was their age, man. Whenever someone came around that was playing ball, you look up to them. Whatever you can do to give back, it’s what you gotta to do.”
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