On Thursday, the Italian national baseball team beat Cuba in their first appearance in the World Baseball Classic, the baseball World Cup currently being held between the United States, Japan and Taiwan. Cuba has a great tradition of baseball: it is its national sport and many of its players play regularly on North American Major League teams, the reference league for baseball. Italy has not faced Cuba at the World Cup, which is held every four years since 2006, and in the previous 54 they have won only twice. On Wednesday in Taiwan, they managed to win 6-3 in extra rounds, i.e., overtime.
In this edition of the World Baseball Classic, Cuba presents itself for the first time with a selection of players also consisting of those who fled the island years ago to go and play in the United States: until recently none had represented themselves. country in international competitions.
So Cuba was considered the strongest competitor in the Italy group, whose national team is coached by Mike Piazza, the famous former New York Mets player and owner of the Reggiana football team for a short time. The team is made up almost entirely of Italian-American players, some from the big leagues, such as Vinny Pascuantino, Nicky Lopez, and Andre Palante.
After Thursday’s win, Italy can qualify first in their group for the quarter-finals, which will take place in Tokyo. He will play against Taiwan at lunchtime on Friday, then against Panama on Saturday and finally against the Netherlands on Sunday.
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