Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities: World Series Softball Championship

Players from Houston Astros RBI and RBI Santo Domingo will take the field tomorrow, August 17 at 12:00 pm ET at Pioneer Field at Texas Woman's University in the Softball Championship Game of the 22nd annual Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) World Series.

The game will air on MLB Network and streamed on MLB.com, the official website of Major League Baseball, at 10:30 am ET on Tuesday, August 19. Professional softball player and United States Olympic gold medalist Natasha Watley and former Major League broadcaster Dave Raymond will call the championship game. Visit www.MLBNetwork.com for local channel listings.

Houston RBI, who lost in the 2013 Softball Championship game, is making their sixth consecutive RBI World Series Softball Division appearance and their second appearance in the Championship game. RBI Santo Domingo has reached the Softball Championship three out of the last four years (2011, 2012 and 2014) and has won the Championship in 2008 and 2012.

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The RBI World Series is the international baseball and softball championship tournament of the Major League Baseball RBI program. RBI is designed to provide young people from underserved and urban communities with the opportunity to play baseball and softball, encourage academic success and teach the value of teamwork.

RBI alumni on MLB rosters during the 2014 regular season include Michael Bourn (Cleveland Indians), Carl Crawford (Los Angeles Dodgers), Coco Crisp (Oakland Athletics), Yovani Gallardo(Milwaukee Brewers), James Loney (Tampa Bay Rays), Manny Machado (Baltimore Orioles),Anthony Rendon (Washington Nationals), CC Sabathia (New York Yankees), Tyler Skaggs(Arizona Diamondbacks) and Justin Upton (Atlanta Braves), among others. Crawford (Houston RBI - '97), Loney (Houston RBI - '99), Crisp (LA RBI - '95, '96) and Gallardo (Fort Worth RBI - '03) have each played in the RBI World Series.

In the 2012-2014 First-Year Player Drafts, 40 RBI alumni were selected, with 27 of those players participating in past RBI World Series tournaments. The RBI program, which has served approximately 2 million young people since 1989, currently serves approximately 230,000 young people in 300 programs in over 200 cities worldwide. 

For more information, visit MLB.com/rbi

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