Baseballissimo MY SUMMER IN THE ITALIAN MINOR LEAGUES

During a pregame workout in Nettuno, Italy, Mirko Rocchetti, an infielder with the Peones, arrived at the park carrying a tray of cornetti, brioche, and biscotti. Simone Cancelli (the Natural) followed twenty minutes later with a large box, which he placed on the ledge of the dugout. He lifted the lid, pulled back a layer of crepe paper, and revealed a small mountain of fresh croissants, their light, flaky shells embossed with vanilla crema. A few minutes later Francesco "Pompo" Pompozzi, the Peones' twentyoneyearold fireballer, produced two green bottles filled with sugarsoaked espresso, and passed out little white plastic cups. Ricky Viccaro (Solid Gold) who looked, as always, as if he were standing in front of a wind machine showed up a halfhour into the game, swinging a red Thermos of espresso, which he cracked in the fifth inning and refilled for the beginning of the second game. Someone else placed boxes of sweets on racks above the bench, and they were polished off in no time. This sugar fiesta was typical for the Peones, Nettuno's Serie B baseball team. They believed as did many Italians that sugar and coffee were all you needed to get you through any game. Andrea Cancelli (the Emperor) munched on energy pills that tasted like tiny soap cakes. At a game in Sardinia, I saw Fabio Giolitti (Fab Julie) pat his rumbling stomach before fetching a box of wafer cookies from his kit bag, which he passed out, two at a time, to his teammates. Then Mirko asked me, "Davide? Are you hungry?" and promptly handed me two panini spread with grape jelly the Italian athlete's equivalent of an energy bar. At the same game, Mario Mazza, the Peones' second baseman, gathered the team excitedly, as if he'd just cracked the opposing team's sequence of signs, only to pass out packets of sugar he'd swiped from a cafe. The players poured them down the hatch. I joined in, even though I wasn't playing, just watching the Peones, the team I'd come to Italy to write about. I found language as much a cultural divide as the approach to food, though I was able to find my place among the Peones by spouting a combination ItaloCanadianBaseballese, at the risk of becoming Team Stooge. At times, I wondered whether the boys were asking me questions just to see how I would mangle their mother tongue. One day, Chencho Navacci, the team's lefthanded reliever, heard me comment that a hit had been "il pollo morto." "Tuo pollo?" he asked. "No, la palla. La palla e il pollo. Il pollo e morto." "Okay, okay," he said, smiling. "You know, dying quail," I said, reverting to English. "?" "The chicken is dead," I said, making a high, curving motion with my hand. "The ball la palla. La palla e il pollo." "Il pollo?" I couldn't understand why Chencho was so confused. I'd always assumed that dying quail baseball's term for a hit that bloops between the infield and the outfield was one of those universal baseball terms. "Si! Il pollo e morto!" I repeated. "Il pollo e morto? Okay, is good!" he said, turning away. Later, I told Janet, my wife, what had happened at the ballpark. "La qualia," she corrected. "You should have said 'la qualia.'" "How was I supposed to know they hadBidini, Dave is the author of 'Baseballissimo MY SUMMER IN THE ITALIAN MINOR LEAGUES' with ISBN 9780771014611 and ISBN 0771014619.