Run to Classic semifinals has huge impact across Italy

MIAMI – Team Italy has heard the jabs. They understand that people look at them not as an Italian ballclub, but a group of guys from America masquerading as an Italian team. But this team doesn’t care.

“There's a lot of stereotypical Italians on this team,” captain Vinnie Pasquantino joked. “As I've read a lot this week, there's a lot of guys from New Jersey.”

Though their surprising run in the World Baseball Classic ended in a 4-2 loss in the semifinals against Venezuela on Monday night, they’ve already seen the impact that this fun-loving group of espresso-shot-taking ballplayers have made in Europe. For the first time, Italy’s daily newspapers are talking about baseball. Members of its government are talking about baseball and the tournament reached millions of viewers across the nation.

For the kids who are growing up there, well, they just may be the next great Italian born-and-developed ballplayer.

“I'm going to speak about the time when I was a child in Venezuela,” Italy manager Francisco Cervelli said. “Remember when there was a soccer World Cup? For one month, we all played soccer. I think that someone [in Italy] will be with a rubber ball or grabbing a bat and they’ll want to go to the field.”

That is the team’s real goal.

“To be an ambassador [for Italian baseball] is extremely humbling for me,” Pasquantino said. “I hope you guys are enjoying watching us as much fun as we're having representing you.”

The decision to take on the managerial job – one which came with a stated goal of developing baseball in the country – re-sparked Cervelli’s love of the game.

“The development or the growth of baseball in Italy, it's been planned,” Cervelli said. “I fell in love with baseball. I started working with small kids on the field. At that point in time, my life had no direction. I found the passion on a field with kids that wanted to play and learn how to play baseball.”

He opened an academy with the help of the Italian-American Baseball Foundation in Grosseto, Italy, on the western edge of the country. He drove over 15,000 kilometers to watch baseball across the country, see its fields and meet its players.

“We started to rebuild,” Cervelli said. “Baseball was forgotten, the guys were hopeless. We started to learn and understand what was needed to improve. When I failed in my first tournament, I learned. In my second tournament, it was better. We are going to continue failing. We make some adjustments, and we move on.”

Before anything else, though, you need to be able to inspire. That’s what this Italian team did.

“First of all,” Cervelli said, “You have to sell that idea to the kids, especially in Europe, that baseball could be a way of life.”

Beyond that, Pasquantino has one thing he wants the kids who have tuned in to this baseball thing to know:

“The message I would send to those kids is just, ‘Look how much fun we're having.’”

“If you watch baseball, one guy will do something, and all 26 or 30, however many are [on the roster], are celebrating at one time,” Pasquantino said, comparing the game to soccer. “I think that's one of the special things about the game, is you're all watching one person succeed, and then you celebrate as a team around him.”

The impact is already being felt. Alessandro Ercolani, the Pirates prospect from San Marino – a country of just 34,000 people – was unable to play in the tournament after suffering an injury. But on Monday, he made the drive to Miami to be in attendance.

“​​People are all excited back home. They are really proud of this national team,” Ercolani said. “I think young people are going to start to see this sport more than ever before on TV, in stories, on social media. They’re going to get curious about this sport and hopefully a lot more people will get to know baseball.”

Before ever signing with a professional team, he had pitched in Italy’s Serie A – the top baseball league in the country. He’s not the only one: Samuel Aldegheri, the first Italian born-and-developed pitcher in big league history, played for Parma. So did catcher Alberto Mineo, who was injured and had to be removed from the roster. Claudio Scotti was with Bologna.

This tournament was also for those players.

“Without them opening their arms to Italian-Americans, this doesn't happen,” Pasquantino said. “I just told them, I'm so grateful for them. I'm so blessed that they've come into my life, that they opened their arms to a lot of us that just wanted to represent the country the right way, and they were amazing. For me, it's just trying to show them how much we appreciate them for bringing us in and we want to do the same back to back to them.”

The tournament may be over for Team Italy, but the work to grow the game in Europe is just beginning.

“I’ve been to Italy once and that’s not enough,” Pasquantino said. “If I really want to make an impact, I’ve got to get out there – and it will be a lot easier with Francisco at the helm, with [FIBS president] Marco Mazzieri at the helm, with Ned [Colletti] at the helm – and do camps or whatever it may be out in Italy.”

And should that work, should this group of guys who became a close-knit family of Italians and Italian-Americans in just two weeks, really turn Italy into a baseball-crazed nation?

“For the kids in Italy, just know that we're doing this for you guys,” Pasquantino said. “We want in 20 years for the World Baseball Classic team to be full of Italians, like Italian speakers from Italy. That's the goal of this.”