FRONT ROW L to R; Casey Garcia, Alex Rosado, Kristopher Gonzalez, Robbie Wendland, Jessey Belanger, Chris Medina, Michael Aviles and Danny Melgarejo. BACK ROW L to R; Chris Meyer, Brandon McCalla, Sean Hernandez, Michael Mediavilla, Chris Koppenhaver, Harry Szajnert and Micah Baxter-Miller. COACHES L to R. Vince Miller, Steve Koppenhaver, Orestes Melgarejo and Onel Garcia....This was the Red Dogs first tournament championship. The team played inspired baseball as we went 5-0 and won a thrilling semi over Cooper City and beat a great Scorpions team in the final.

 The TRAVELBALLSELECT.COM rankings came out this week and the Red Dogs are ranked 12th. We are very happy honored by this and very fortunate. It is not easy to get mentioned among the best travel teams in America. When we started this team our motto from day one was "Continuous Improvement" but we never intended to get to this level. But the motto remains the same for the proud Red Dog organization. There are a lot of great teams in the top 20 and beyond. Congratulations goes out to the SF Extreme for being ranked #10, it's well deserved as they have worked very hard and have a great team. The Terror that beat us in Atlanta are # 5, the Red Raiders from Central Florida are 14th and congratulations goes out to the Ballers also who are # 16th and Team Hammer who is 18th from the State of Florida.

Here is the top 20;

1- Banditos Black- TX
2- Team Rawlings Elite- CA
3- Terminators- MS
4- HB Nitro Elite- CA
5- Terror- LA
6- East Cobb Astros- GA
7- Nitro- AZ
8- Nevada Wildcats- NV
9- Charlotte Megastars- NC
10- SF Extreme- FL
11- Chandler Reds- AZ
12- PPO Red Dogs- FL
13- PC Vipers- GA
14- CF Red Raiders- FL
15- Tomateros de California- CA
16- Miami Ballers- FL
17- Germantown Giants- TN
18- Team Hammer- FL
19- Team Anderson- CA
20- Virginia Shredders- VA

 The Red Dogs played well in Atlanta this past weekend but just ran out of gas in the semis. We started the tournament a little shaky with a 7-4 win in a game where we made 6 errors and did not hit the ball like we can. Thanks to Alex Sarmiento's pitching in that game. We broke out the bats in the second game beating the Georgia Panthers 15-0 just after they had beaten a very good Tsunami team 11-7. That made us the #1 seed in pool C. We first played a very good Beaver Valley Red team that had just beaten the Montgomery Dirtbags 13-0 and they started the game with back to back doubles but that was it, we then broke out the bats our own and won the game 12-1. On to another park we went and took an early 6-0 lead on a good NF Bulls team but they came to tie it till Kevin Abraham hit a 2 run shot to give us the lead 8-6.  Back to Heritage Park we went and we played the Terror baseball and they took a early 4-0 lead which we were able to cut down to 4-3 but they just pulled away as they hit the ball very well all game. Congratulations to the Terror as they went on to beat the Megastars in the finals and earn a berth in the Elite 32. As for us we are very proud to do well in a big tournament going 4-1 and sustain our place as one of the top teams around since late 2007.

   The Red Dogs played their 400th in their history today in Pasadena and won the game 13-4. We are truly blessed for being able to have played so much baseball in the last 3 1/2 years and experiencing these kids grow right in front of our eyes and learning not just being better baseball players but young men of character also. We created the Red Dogs organization to be able to provide a home for kids that wanted to play travel baseball and play it competitively and wanted to learn and get better. There is a lot of great organizations out there we respect but there's a lot of kids that want to be part of something special and we thought one more was needed back then and now were glad we started this thing. Let's keep playing ball.

TBS ARTICLE ON RED DOGS ON 10/31/08-FEATURE TEAM

TBS Top 25- 12 and under

Click here to see article
Our friend and rival Brian "Big B" Gonzalez is being featured in TRAVELBALLSELECT.COM  Big B certainly deserves the recognition as he has been a consistent force in our age group for many years. Brian mentions the Red Dogs as his main rival as he was a part of the SF Extreme classic games versus the Red Dogs over the past two years. We wish Brian much success in the future.

FRONT ROW L to R; Casey Garcia, Alex Rosado, Kristopher Gonzalez, Robbie Wendland, Jessey Belanger, Chris Medina, Michael Aviles and Danny Melgarejo. BACK ROW L to R; Chris Meyer, Brandon McCalla, Sean Hernandez, Michael Mediavilla, Chris Koppenhaver, Harry Szajnert and Micah Baxter-Miller. COACHES L to R. Vince Miller, Steve Koppenhaver, Orestes Melgarejo and Onel Garcia....This was the Red Dogs first tournament championship. The team played inspired baseball as we went 5-0 and won a thrilling semi over Cooper City and beat a great Scorpions team in the final.