![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/s_image1274408917-24949.jpg\")
Photo by Stephen Dachman<\/p>\nPhoto by Stephen Dachman<\/p>\n
Baseball is a game of failure\u2014stand in any Little League dugout for more than a few minutes, and you’re bound to hear that gem, often offered as encouragement. <\/span>After all, look at the best single season of hitting in MLB history (Hugh Duffy, way back in 1894), and you’ll see a guy who had to head back to the bench 56% of the time. <\/span>It’s just the nature of the game\u2014playing your best doesn’t always mean you get the trophy, the pennant, or even the win. <\/span>No ball player in this city learned that this year more than Cabrillo’s top pitcher, Ramiro Rosalez, who nearly pulled off a momentous upset not once, not twice, but three <\/em>times\u2014only to come up inches short.<\/span><\/p>\n The process started after last year, when Rosalez came to Jags coach Eric Bryant at the end of his junior season, and told him he wanted to be his ace in 2010. <\/span>“We’d seen his potential,” says Bryant, “I knew he had all the tools. <\/span>So we worked with him in the offseason, I told him if he shed a few pounds, worked on his spots, developed a changeup and his command, he could be great. <\/span>And he did all of that.” To the chagrin of the rest of the league\u2014Poly, Millikan, and Wilson all found a very different Cabrillo team than they were used to facing. <\/span>On opening day, Rosalez dealt to Poly, his Jags holding a 1-0 lead since the bottom of the first. <\/span>After six innings, it was still 1-0 Cabrillo, just three outs away from the upset. <\/span>Then Jordan Wilcox hit a home run with about two inches to spare over the left field fence, and Poly rallied to win 3-1. <\/span>“That could have been our season right there,” Poly coach Toby Hess remembered later in the year. <\/span> A month later, Rosalez gave up two runs to Millikan in the bottom of the second, and then held on for dear life, walking one batter as the Jags tried to get some runs across. <\/span>But despite a few chances, they scored just once, in the fourth, and lost 2-1. <\/span>Shaking his head after the game, Glasser called Rosalez “impressive,” and said, “[He] could start for any team in the Moore League.” On May 10th, it seemed like he’d finally get a reward for the hard work and heartache\u2014but that’s not always how baseball works. <\/span>The Jags held a 4-1 lead after six innings, but lacked the bullpen to spell Rosalez, who was still just a few games back from a shoulder injury that kept him out almost four weeks. <\/span>He gave up three runs in the top of the seventh, then another in the extra inning. <\/span>Cabrillo lost, 4-3, taking with them Rosalez’s hopes to shock the city. “It’s tough,” says Bryant. <\/span>“He works so hard. <\/span>He was the first one out there every day, the backbone of the team, our leader, our captain. <\/span>We all got on his shoulders, and he carried us. <\/span>If he pitches at Lakewood, with that run support, he’d be just like Yamaguchi, a 5-0, 6-0 kind of guy.” Rosalez, who will get a chance to continue his career at either Compton College or LBCC, says he never got extra fired up to play a league team that Cabrillo wasn’t supposed to be able to hang with. <\/span>“It doesn’t matter who’s at the plate to me,” he says. <\/span>“If I’m on the mound, I’m just trying to pitch.” <\/span>He does admit it was a disappointment not to get the upset win he worked so hard for. <\/span>“It’s really hard,” he said. <\/span>“It’s my senior year, and I wanted to go out with a bang.” <\/span>He worked for it, he almost got it\u2014some would say he deserved it, but three times Rosalez came up short by just a few outs, or a few runs.<\/p>\n The upside is, he gets to keep playing, and with his velocity and his size (Rosalez is 6’2″), his coach says he has a real chance to be a success, especially with the maturity he’s shown in controlling the pace and tempo of games. And he’ll certainly have more bullpen and run support behind him at the JC level. <\/span>As for last year, what else is there to say? <\/span>Tough? <\/span>No doubt. <\/span>Unfair? <\/span>You bet. <\/span>But hey: that’s baseball.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" He almost pulled off a momentous upset\u2014three times. But Jaguar Ramiro Rosalez showed his spirit even in the face of defeat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":16852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1177"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=1177"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}