Adrian Alcala, who played for the Lowell Spinners, a minor league baseball team in the Boston Red Sox organization, has been named the new baseball coach at Hialeah Miami Lakes High School.
Alcala was hired on July 14 to lead a Trojans team that hasn’t recorded a winning season in almost 10 years.
“Join us in welcoming former Boston Red Sox and collegiate standout Adrian Alcala as the new HML Baseball Coach,” said the schools website.
Alcala could not be reached for comments.
According to his Lowell Spinners baseball guide, Alcala was born in Miami, where he played high school and college baseball.
The third baseman was drafted by the Boston Red Sox and spent some time in the team’s minor league system before he was called up to play in the majors.
One of his minor league career highlights came 14 years ago, when he helped his team rally from a two run deficit in extra innings.
According to the Lowell Sun, in 2002, Alcala hit the first extra inning walk off home run by a Lowell minor-leaguer in 69 years, when he socked a two-run shot with two outs in the bottom of the 10th inning off Greg Blalock and lifted the Spinners to a 5-3 triumph over the Jamestown Jammers in front of an SRO crowd of 5,000 at Edward A. LeLacheur Park in Lowell, Massachusetts.
At the time, it was Alcala’s first pro home run. The SRO crowd was the Spinners’ 100th consecutive over parts of four seasons.
Rick Rojas, a former pitcher for Hialeah Miami Lakes who was drafted by the Kansas City Royals in 1985, said Alcala can bring back the magic the Trojans experienced years ago.
“Let’s get HML back to a championship team,” said Rojas, a distinguished alumni, who was named Miami-Dade County’s 100 greatest high school baseball players. “Let’s bring baseball back to HML, which was once the best high school baseball program in the state of Florida.”