Italy

Players who were born here

Italy is a country located in south-central Europe on the Italian peninsula.

Italy has long had an interest in baseball. The national baseball federation is called the Federazione Italiana Baseball & Softball. Serie A1 is the top league in the country and has featured dozens of former major league players.

Although few major leaguers have been born in Italy, a great many major leaguers of Italian ancestry have played in the majors. The most famous is probably Joe DiMaggio. Some players changed their names, so that their Italian ancestry is not obvious - an example is Ping Bodie, born Francesco Stephano Pezzolo.

Italy has produced several minor leaguers in the late 20th and early 21st Century - Davide Anselmi, Cesare Astorri, Andrea Castrì, Mario Chiarini, Francesco Imperiali, Claudio Liverziani, Giuseppe Mazzanti, Alessandro Maestri, Mattia Mercuri, Luca Panerati, Nicolò Pinazzi, Matteo Pizziconi, Davide Rigoli, Claudio Scotti, Alberto Mineo,Luca Martone and Matteo Bocchi. In 2011, Alex Liddi became the first homegrown Italian major leaguer. The next year, Maestri became the first homegrown Italian to play in Nippon Pro Baseball (or any of Asia's big 3 leagues for that matter). Samuel Aldegheri was the first born-and-raised Italian pitcher to make the majors, in 2024.

The Italian national team has played in every edition of the World Baseball Classic, although it has relied to a large extent on Italian-American coaches and players, and on American and other foreign players who have played in Serie A1. Hall of Famer Mike Piazza has been among the most prominent of these, even moving to Parma in order to support the growth of baseball in the country of his ancestors.

Further Reading

• Lawrence Baldassaro: Beyond DiMaggio: Italian Americans in Baseball, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 2011.
• Lawrence Baldassaro: Baseball Italian Style: Great Stories Told by Italian American Major Leaguers from Crosetti to Piazza, Sports Publishing LLC, New York, NY, 2018. ISBN 9781683581116
• Casey Drottar: "Piazza dreaming big while reshaping baseball’s foundation in Italy", mlb.com, July 22, 2024. [1]
• Larry Freundlich, ed.: Reaching for the Stars: A Celebration of Italian Americans in Major League Baseball, Ballantine Books, New York, NY, 2003.