‘These days truly feel like a fairytale’: What Team Italy’s run in the World Baseball Classic means to Italian baseball fans

By Hannah Keyser, CNN

(CNN) — Team Italy pitcher Dylan DeLucia threw four shutout innings in the World Baseball Classic quarterfinal game against Puerto Rico – purportedly the first baseball game to be broadcast on national Italian television.

When he was done, the prospect in the Cleveland Guardians system who hails from Florida had an eye-opening moment when he looked at his phone.

“So, I opened my phone after the game to like 60 DMs and it was in words I didn’t know how to say,” Delucia said before the semifinal of the messages he received from Italian fans appreciating his performance. “Definitely going to have to do some Google Translate for sure. But it was awesome, really, like just to see that side of everything.”

Awesome, and rather unexpected. Italy, after all, is not known as a hotbed of baseball. But over the past few weeks, at least some Italians found themselves eager for a crash course in the sport.

“It’s a wonderful thing, what’s been happening in Italy in recent days, thanks to the explosion of baseball in all the national media. So many people are asking how the game is played and what the rules are,” Gianlucca Marcoccio, a 53-year-old policeman who lives in Nattuno, told CNN Sports over WhatsApp.

People were asking because Team Italy enjoyed a Cinderella run in the WBC. Although it ended Monday night with their first loss of the tournament to Team Venezuela, the Italians made it further than they ever have in the tournament.

The Azzurri, as they’re known, were undefeated – including a stunning victory over Team USA – until the semifinals. They were also charming and goofy and good-natured about both their Italian roots and their actual American upbringing, for the most part. Mostly composed of second-tier major leaguers and minor leaguers whose names end in a vowel, they embraced celebratory stereotypes – drinking shots of espresso after each home run, pantomiming double-cheek kisses, and donning an Armani jacket in the dugout.

It was a captivating, if somewhat silly, subplot to a tournament that has established itself as a meaningful arbiter of international baseball hierarchy. In Italy, internet interest in baseball soared – Google trends show that, since the beginning of March, there has been at least four times as much search activity around the sport as there has been at any point since 2010. The nation’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, mentioned the win over Team USA in a parliamentary speech.

“If you watch the newspaper, it’s going to be five, six pages about soccer. Now we’re in,” Team Italy’s manager Francisco Cervelli said after they secured a spot in the semifinals.

“I get the message from all my friends, my family there. Just imagine, in the south of Italy they don’t play that much baseball. Yesterday, everyone was watching the game. They send me pictures all the time. It’s like the family reunion watching baseball. Even if they don’t know that much or they don’t understand that much.”

‘Citta del Baseball’

That’s why Italians were asking about baseball. And they were asking Marcocci because he is the rare thing: a lifelong, diehard Italian baseball fan.

Not Italian like the World Baseball Classic defines it – which is to say, broadly and primarily applying to Americans with Italian heritage – but actual Italian Italian.

In a country obsessed with soccer, Nettuno, a coastal town of around 50,000 about an hour south of Rome, is the “Citta del Baseball” – an enclave enamored with the American pastime. Their connection to the sport dates back to World War II, when Allied soldiers taught the locals how to appreciate and play the game.

“Here in Nettuno, we all grew up with this passion,” Marcocci said.

Nettuno went on to become a small-market powerhouse in Italian baseball. And Marcocci, who attended his first game at 10 years old, is a baseball superfan who even played and coached at multiple levels of Italian baseball. In conjunction with other locals who love the game, he founded a Facebook group, Il Bar del Baseball, that has grown to over 23,000 members.

During Team Italy’s 2026 WBC run, the group served as a virtual watch party. Members posted pictures of their TVs tuned to the game and would essentially live-chat their experiences. Even for the semifinal, which started at 1 a.m. local time, they checked in from Parma, Bologna, Verona, Roma, Miano, and all across Italy.

“(N)on si può mancare,” someone commented. You can’t miss it.

“In short, for us lovers of the most beautiful sport in the world, these days truly feel like a fairytale,” Marcocci told CNN before Italy’s last game.

Embracing the Italian-Americans of Team Italy

Marcocci said that they don’t begrudge the Americans on the team. This tournament has endeared Italians to the MLB players who elected to represent Italy and that fandom will follow them back to their primary clubs.

“Of course, I’ll continue to cheer on the players who have worn the Italian national team jersey,” he said. “I also hope that, thanks to this tournament, they can earn higher salaries and that in the next Classic they’ll continue this journey, choosing to wear the Italian national team jersey once again.”

And even though he’s from Richmond, Virginia, that’s especially true of Vinnie Pasquantino, Team Italy’s captain, who said after the loss that he heard seven million people watched the game back in Italy.

“That’s why we’re doing this tournament, in my opinion,” Pasquantino told reporters. “The goal of this team – we’ve talked about it a lot – is to impact Italy, and we have, and that’s incredible. So for us, we weren’t successful on the field tonight, but we were successful in Italy, and that’s what this is all about.”

He called himself an ambassador of the game to Italy, said he wanted to bring baseball camps to the country to encourage more local talent development and hoped that 20 years from now, the entire WBC roster would consist of Italy-born Italians.

Marcocci has a more modest goal. He wants Cervelli to return as manager. He wants to see six real Italians in the next WBC, “and above all, that they are actually used during the tournament. This would truly be a great sign for Italian baseball.”

Already, there’s evidence of a grassroots groundswell of baseball inspired by the WBC.

“In fact, videos are already circulating in Italy of players who, after hitting a hit, immediately go for an espresso!” Marcocci said. “It’s becoming a real trend.”

The-CNN-Wire
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