The provisions regarding the next baseball and softball season in Italy have been issued by the FIBS. We begin to outline the picture of what we will see in the coming year, through a Federal Council that also remembered the figure of Gino Calati, referee of Serie A in baseball who died at just 49 years old.
The two seasons of greatest national media interest will start on April 2, but in a different way: the Serie A baseball with the first day, softball with the Italian Cup, which returns to play an important role and which will be discussed later.
Starting with A in baseball, this will still be made up of 32 teams, and there will be four groups of 8. They will consist of two seeded teams (which will be taken between the teams of the 2nd phase of 2021), a newly promoted team and 5 teams from the 2021 Salvation Pool chosen according to geographical proximity criteria. In the first phase there will be only the first leg with two games in the best of nine innings; the first two of each group will pass to the Scudetto Pool for a total of 8.
From here, as a year ago, we will arrive at 2 groups of 4 with a first leg, intergirone and return: in this case the weekly matches will be three out of seven rounds (10 weeks, 30 games). Pitchers: race 1 will be reserved for those with a visa, race 2 for AFI and race 3 for non-AFI community members.
The first two of the groups go to the semifinals, which will compete in a crossroads (1A-2B, 1B-2A). Series at the best of 7 games out of 7 innings, and the same duration will be for the Italian Baseball Series, i.e. the championship final, with the last available date set for Sunday 18 September 2022.
The other 24 teams will play a Poule Salvation with 4 groups of 6. In this case there and back with 2 matches per week and 9 rounds. The last two of each group will cross in the playout at the best of 5 games: the losers will go to B, the 16 already saved will play the Italian Cup in 4 concentrations.
The losers of the championship semi-finals will cross with third and fourth of the groups and winners of the Italian Cup concentrations: there will be two more, in fact, concentrations, with three teams for each and one-way rounds in a single day. The two winners go to the Final Four of the Italian Cup together with the teams that have played for the Scudetto. The winner of the Final Four on 24-25 September will play the 2023 European Cup.
The simpler speech of the A1 series of softball: it will be preceded by the Italian Cup in the first three weekends of April, while the top league will start in the fourth (2 groups of 6 teams). This will develop as follows: first leg, return, intergirone and then Italian Softball Series at the best of 5 games, upwards. Below, however, there will be three relegations: the last two of the groups plus the loser of the playout among the five. Since only one team will go up from A2, there will be a 10-team A1 in 2023. Speaking of softball again, Italy has decided to present the candidacy for the World Cup on a new format (qualification and final phase, 2023-2024)
Italian teams in Europe: in baseball San Marino and Parma will play the European Cup, in softball Forlì and Bollate the Premiere Cup, Saronno the ESF Cup Winners Cup.
Foto: FIBS / K73 NADOC
