Three years into his professional baseball career, 24-year-old Joe La Sorsa had just come off one of his best seasons yet. But his future was more unclear than ever.
The young lefty spent 2022 in the Tampa Bay Rays organization, excelling in his 40 outings split between High-A Bowling Green and Double-A Montgomery. La Sorsa ended the season with the best WHIP (0.82) and second-best ERA (2.33) among all Tampa Bay farmhands with at least 70.0 innings pitched — good enough to be named a 2022 Rays MiLB.com Organization All-Star. Spring Training was right around the corner. But his phone wasn’t ringing.
“The Rays didn’t want to invite me to big league camp,” La Sorsa said. “Coming off of having a really good year, being one of their relievers of the year in Double-A, I didn't get invited [to] big league camp.”
La Sorsa looked for other ways to get his foot in the door. The Italian Baseball Softball Federation opened theirs.
“My agent said, ‘Listen, there’s a rule that if you are playing in the [World Baseball Classic], you have to go to big league camps,’” La Sorsa said. “‘You have Italian ancestry. Let’s see what we can do about that.’”
La Sorsa made Italy’s 2023 World Baseball Classic (WBC) roster, and his year full of non-stop travel and meet-and-greets began: he started the season in Florida for Spring Training, flew to Taiwan with the Azzurri, competed against Team Japan in the Tokyo Dome, returned to Florida, opened the minor league season with Montgomery and then was quickly promoted to Triple-A Durham. On May 28, 2023, La Sorsa was called up to Tampa Bay and made his major league debut the next day against the Chicago Cubs, blanking them with two scoreless innings at Wrigley Field. 10 days later, La Sorsa was claimed off waivers by the Nationals, and finished the year between Triple-A Rochester and Washington. That’s seven clubhouses, three countries, too many bus rides and countless new teammates, coaches and opponents.
La Sorsa embraced the chaos.
“You really just have to bear down, buckle down, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, and do everything you can do to compete,” La Sorsa said. “What you have to realize is ‘Sure, there’s a lot of variables going against you, but there’s also a lot of things that if you do right, and if you can get it right, it can turn out monstrous for your career in a very positive manner.’ You just have to keep that in the back of your mind, that this is why I’m doing it.”
Joining Italy’s 2023 WBC team, and again in 2026, was bigger than just putting La Sorsa’s name out there. It was about representing everything that his name carries — his heritage, culture and those that came before him. And his family filling the WBC stands were witnesses to that.
“I know that it was very emotional for my grandpa to see [Team Italy] move on and keep advancing and doing well,” La Sorsa recalled. “It was a huge opportunity for me to… [represent] where I’m coming from and all the ancestry that I’ve had to get me here to play for something like that. I think the ones living or deceased — but definitely the ones living that were conscious of it — were very, very proud, and it made them very emotional to see me play.”
La Sorsa was raised in what he described as a “very traditional Italian household:” both sides of his family came over from Italy a few generations ago and made their way to New York. Being around athletes who shared Italian ancestry, especially fellow southpaw Sam Aldegheri, who was born and raised in Italy, reminded La Sorsa of how he grew up. Competing with Team Italy made him feel at home and proud to be Italian.
In 2023, Team Italy finished second in Pool A, runner-up to Cuba, and moved onto the quarterfinals. In front of 41,723 fans in the Tokyo Dome, Italy fell, 9-3, to the powerhouse Japan on March 16, 2023. Fast forward to 2026, Italy was placed in Pool B with the United States, Mexico, Great Britain and Brazil. The United States and Mexico had both made it to the semifinals in 2023, with the U.S. falling to Japan in the championship.
“Obviously we were not intended to advance, let alone win the pool,” La Sorsa said.
The baseball world clearly agreed. Staff writers at MLB.com did not have Italy making it out of their pool. ESPN staff unanimously picked the U.S. to win Pool B — 11 of 14 voters predicted that Mexico would advance as runner-up, leaving Italy in the dust, and just three picked the Azzurri to take the second quarterfinal spot. Entering 2026, Italy was ranked 14th in the world out of 20 countries by the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC). Before the tournament even began, Italy was written off.
La Sorsa and his teammates were well aware.
“We knew that we were the underdogs,” La Sorsa said. “We knew that we were put in the death bracket. We knew that we weren’t supposed to advance in the last bracket, we were supposed to be kind of a throw-in team, to have more teams advance that were [more] popular than us per se.”
Italy stepped onto the world stage as a participation-trophy team; they emerged as the dark horse.
“We were highly aware of everything going on and we definitely played to that,” La Sorsa said. “They gave us an inch; we took it a mile.”
The Azzurri ran off the script with flying colors. Italy didn’t just make it out of its pool — it emerged as winners, completing an undefeated, 5-0 run. Italy shocked the world on March 10, defeating the United States, 8-6.
“[Team U.S.] faced a team that was very young, very hungry, and very ambitious to win, and we came out punching,” La Sorsa said.
La Sorsa certainly came out punching — punching out Kyle Schwarber as the first batter he faced in that Italy and U.S. matchup. La Sorsa was the most used pitcher out of Italy’s bullpen in 2026, the only reliever to make four appearances in the tournament for the Azzurri. If anyone was made for the moment, it was La Sorsa. He has pitched in front of major league crowds; but as plenty of WBC alumni have stressed, La Sorsa attests that the Classic is an entirely different animal from any stage in this sport.
“Regardless of how much [professional baseball] experience you have, there’s definitely a different persona and mentality that you got to go about [the WBC],” La Sorsa said. “Your body is just running on pure emotions and adrenaline the whole time, so you better be locked in because otherwise, if you’re not able to go out there and lock it in on the mound or at the plate, you’re going to have a bad day.”
Thunderous, ear-piercing chants and screams from 38,653 fans filled Daikin Park in Houston, Texas for the Italy vs. U.S. contest. Pitchers smashed their gloves up against their ears to try to block out the noise, they could hardly hear their PitchComs. Before anyone played in a regular season game, these athletes were competing in a high-stakes playoff where every pitch mattered. So how does one stay locked in in an environment like that?
“I don’t even know, sometimes I don't even know how I do it,” La Sorsa said with a hint of disbelief and awe in his tone. “You really just have to have laser focus. You have to have in the back of your mind how much this means to me, my family, my country, everyone [I’m] representing, the guys that I’m playing with.”
Italy made it to the tournament semifinals in 2026 for the first time in the team’s history. In a dramatic come-from-behind victory, Venezuela eliminated Italy, 4-2, and would go on to be the champions of the Classic.
After this year’s WBC, La Sorsa traded in the cursive, savoy blue “Italia” across his chest for the traditional blackletter “INDIANS” that is boldly centered on Indianapolis’ uniforms. A reliable arm out of the bullpen, 12 of La Sorsa’s first 15 outings with the Pittsburgh Pirates organization were scoreless. His 21 appearances as of May 29 put him as the most-used arm on the Indians pitching staff through the first two full months of the season — a role he is not just familiar with, but one that he has proven to shine in whether that is almost 8,000 miles away in Taiwan or right here in the Circle City. La Sorsa changed his jersey, but remains steady in who he is underneath.
“I definitely always have [Team Italy] in the back of my mind, whatever I’m doing,” La Sorsa said. “I was raised through high school and college through my coaches: you’re always representing yourself, your family, your school and your country, so it’s always a part of you that you’re taking with you. I do take that onto the field when I’m playing and it’s an identity of myself. It’s a part of me.”
Whether it’s the next time he takes the mound for Indianapolis, a call from Pittsburgh or a flight across the globe with Italy, La Sorsa is ready for the opportunity.
“At the end, our [Team Italy] manager [Francisco Cervelli] said something very interesting to us,” La Sorsa recalled. “He said, ‘When we come back in 29 or 30, whenever this next WBC is, I just want you all to know that we're going to have a target on our back now, because now, we’re not going to be an underdog as much, now we’re going to be someone that [is] a good team [and] made a good run.’ […] Now we have to switch that mentality for next time because it’s going to be just as long and arduous as this one, and we’re probably going to be in an even more difficult spot. I know we’re going to be ready for it.”