The Worst European Championship in Italy’s Baseball History: Reflections and Urgent Action Needed

A few words would be enough and any discussion on what happened in the past week could be closed in only one way: the worst European Championship in the entire history of Italy of baseball. The Azzurri had never finished so low: ninth, defeated by Sweden and Great Britain and also at risk of losing to Croatia in the final for 9th place.

Many things could still be said, some of which are true. That the wind in Europe has changed, that Spain won for the first time in 58 years, that for the first time Holland and Italy were out of the final for gold, that Holland itself struggled like hell against Germany in the final for 3rd place, that the last act was totally new, that the world of European baseball has grown around. Many, many arguments that each have their own validity, if only because we didn’t need to get to 2023 to understand the current situation. We had realized that things had been changing for about twenty years, with several selections fighting to emerge, more often to the detriment of Italy than Holland.

Here, however, many problems can be listed. From many quarters a more than disparate chorus of voices arose with topics of various kinds. Without summarizing them all, there is one particular fact to point out. Mike Piazza arrived on the Italy bench as manager on 13 November 2019. All following the spectacularly failed Olympic qualification at home, with Gilberto “Gibo” Gerali who in the meantime had resigned. There were many shouts of jubilation at the time.

Since then the results have been linked to a third place at the European Championships at home in 2021, with the wrong match against Israel and the many, too many problems of the pitchers. And now 2023. All calm until Sweden, then the collapse. Even more unexpected because, although the roster of the World Baseball Classic was obviously different, there were veterans from that fifth place finish. In essence, the greater the ability to perform in a competition with more than specific regulatory aspects, the more thunderous was the vertical collapse of this edition of the continental tournament.

Now there will be a lot of reflections to do. And at all levels, because some obvious signal will have to come from FIBS. But how to intervene? They range from the many team issues up to the youth sector, from the fact that this national team was missing someone to the fact that, on a mental level, instead of being able to do what in English-speaking lands is called “bouncing back”, we were not able to to reset. As it is, the blow was thunderous. And it’s so urgent that we have to put it right.

Photo: WBSC Europe / CBA – Petra Voet

2023-10-02 20:25:47
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