Izzy Alcántara

Israel Cristostomo "Izzy" Alcántara (born May 6, 1971 in Baní, Dominican Republic) is a former Major League Baseball player for the Boston Red Sox and Milwaukee Brewers.

Minor leagues

Alcántara was signed as an amateur free agent by the Montreal Expos in 1990. In the minor leagues, Alcantara was very successful, with at least 27 home runs and an OPS of .940 or higher in each of his seasons from 1997 to 2001. He led the International League in home runs twice, with 36 in 2001 and 27 in 2002. His OPS of 1.023 in 2000 was the best in the International League.

Boston Red Sox

Alcántara's minor league success did not carry over to the little time he spent in the Major Leagues, as he played parts of two seasons for the Boston Red Sox, debuting in the major leagues on June 25, 2000. That season, he hit .289 with four home runs in 45 at bats. Despite some success at the plate, Alcántara quickly found himself deep on the Red Sox bench after irking Boston manager Jimy Williams by a perceived lack of hustle during a game against the Chicago White Sox. For a time, Williams refused to play Alcántara despite general manager Dan Duquette's insistence the outfielder be put in the lineup of a team that suffered from low power numbers. In 2001, Alcántara's average declined to .263 with no home runs in 38 at bats in Boston although he continued to smash AAA pitching.

Alcántara is remembered for an incident while he was playing with the Pawtucket Red Sox, Boston's AAA affiliate of the International League. On July 3, 2001, after being brushed back a second time by Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons pitcher Blas Cedeño, Alcántara turned around, kicking catcher Jeremy Salazar, karate-style, in the mask before charging the mound, throwing an unsuccessful punch at Cedeño before turning around as other players joined the fight until he was tackled by Kevin Orie. The incident cost Alcántara a six-game suspension and his spot on the International League's All Star squad.^[1]

Milwaukee Brewers

Before the 2002 season, he was signed as a free agent by the Milwaukee Brewers, where he hit .250 with 2 home runs in 32 at bats. His final Major League game was on August 22, 2002 and he was released by the team after that season.

Later career

He briefly played for Uni-President Lions of Taiwan's Chinese Professional Baseball League in 2005, where he was nicknamed "Al-Qaeda". He surprisingly hit 15 home-runs in just 44 games, with an eye-catching batting average of .322, but was released for reasons never fully explained by the management, while it was rumored that he was a locker room bomb and also some disputes against the management.

In 2005, Alcántara also played four games for the New Jersey Jackals of the independent Canadian-American Association of Professional Baseball.^[2]

References

External links

• Career statistics and player information from Baseball-Reference, or Fangraphs, or The Baseball Cube, or Baseball-Reference (Minors)
• Description of kicking incident from RedSoxConnection.com
• YouTube video of kicking incident
• Baseball Reference minor league statistics
• MLB historical statistics
• Career statistics and player information from Korea Baseball Organization