Gabe Alvarez

Gabriel de Jesus Alvarez (born March 6, 1974) is a former Major League Baseball third baseman. He played for two teams, the Detroit Tigers (1998–2000) and the San Diego Padres (2000). The 6'1, 205 lb right-hander went to USC and made his Major League debut on June 22, 1998, going 1–4.

He was originally drafted by the San Diego Padres in the second round of the 1995 draft. He was then drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks as the fifth pick in the 1997 expansion draft. He was then traded by the Arizona Diamondbacks with Matt Drews and Joe Randa to the Detroit Tigers for Travis Fryman.

Three years later, on July 17, 2000, he was traded again by the Detroit Tigers to the San Diego Padres for Dusty Allen.

He finished his career with 59 hits, a .222 batting average, 29 runs, and a .877 fielding percentage.

While playing in the minor leagues for Rancho Cucamonga in 1995, he turned an unassisted triple play as a second baseman. He caught a line drive over second base, stepped on the bag to get one runner and tagged the other one coming into second from first. He told the reporter covering the game that exactly the same thing had happened to him the previous year at USC, but he threw to first instead of tagging the runner to complete the triple play. He said a teammate had pointed out that he had missed a chance at an unassisted triple play, and he had promised himself if it ever happened again, he would do it differently.

In 2010, Alvarez became the assistant baseball coach at the University of Southern California (USC).