For love of the game

from the homonymous article in the Florentine, 30th April 2008.

In Italy baseball is an almost unknown sport, so only a few people know about the existence of a baseball diamond in Florence, hidden by the shadow of the Fiorentina soccer stadium.
In this place, every Tuesday and Thursday, Lee Foust, an Italian literature teacher at California State’s Campus in Florence, and his boys, ages 8 to 11, play this funny sport. In Tuscany there are 15 teams in the Ragazzi division, and they play games every Sunday.
But in Florence there isn’t only this team, because there’s the Fiorentina baseball team, too. Its players are between the ages of 18 and 35, but unlike the more famous Fiorentina’s football players they don’t play for job, but for hobby, and they aren’t paid so much; they wear red and black instead of purple, too. Fiorentina is one of the best Italian teams, and now it plays in Serie B. For Nicola Bellomo, Fiorentina’s pitching coach, Italian kids don’t like so much baseball because there are few Italian baseball stars to emulate, so is nearly impossible for baseball to become a popular game.
However, Fiorentina baseball team is content playing the game they love in the shadows of the football stadium, cheered by their few, but good, fans.

Simone Giuntini