MLB stars to be at the Evan Chambers Love Foundation Classic. Here's who is expected
LAKELAND — A roundtable question and answer session on Saturday, featuring professional baseball players, including Boston Red Sox pitcher Chris Sale, coaches and scouts, dealing with college and professional baseball recruitment process will be the highlight of the Evan Michael Chambers Love Foundation High School Fall Baseball Classic on Saturday and Sunday at Henley Field.
Four teams will participate in games on Friday and Saturday — Winter Haven, George Jenkins, Lakeland and Pro Youth Foundation, an AAU team out of St. Petersburg.
On Friday, it’s Winter Haven vs. George Jenkins at 5 p.m., and Lakeland vs. Pro Youth Foundation at 7 p.m.
On Saturday, it’s Lakeland’ vs. Winter Haven at 10:30 p.m., and George Jenkins vs. Pro Youth Foundation at 1 p.m.
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The roundtable session will be held between games at noon on Saturday. Along with Sale, a Lakeland High grad, will be his high school teammates Keon Broxton, a former major leaguer now playing in the Mexican League, and Drew Hutchison, a former major league pitcher who played Triple-A in the Toronto and Philadelphia organizations last year. Also attending are former Lake Region star Ronnie Richardson, who is a minor coach for the Tampa Bay Rays and is the event coordinator.
“This is different than what we've done in the past,” said Dr. Evan Chambers of the EMC Love Foundation. “We did the baseball camp in February for the young kids. But this is for the high school players. We started this down in Miami with a friend of Evan's, Chris Geronimo. They played together at Hillsborough Community College. After Evan passed away, he was close to us, so he came up with the idea of a high school baseball classic and we did it from 2019, 2020, 2021 down in Miami with four high school teams playing around robin with a championship game on Sunday. It was very successful, so we decided to bring it up to Lakeland this year because of Evans’ connections.”
The event is free to the public and there will be raffles of a golf bag, Rays tickets, Lightning Tickets, deep cleansing facial package, eyebrow microblading service, theme park tickets, Rays 2024 ticket vouchers, all of which will be given away during the tournament. Also, two $500 Christmas gift cards will be given away to two needy families.
The Evan Michaels Chambers Love Foundation was formed by Dr. Chambers and his wife Denise following the death of their son Evan from a rare heart condition in 2013. Evan starred at Lakeland then was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the third round in 2009.
Sale was close friends with Evan and has remained close to the family and is a big supporter of the foundation.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Evan Chambers Foundation hosting Fall Baseball Classic at Henley Field
