Italian Baseball Story: Surviving Covid-19 Lockdown by Playing Catch Off Balconies — Wash Hands, ‘No Spitballs’ — ‘We’re Not Giving Up’
A couple weeks ago, an Italian baseball friend posted a video on Facebook of two men playing catch off the balconies of their pastel-facade apartments in suburban Rome.
Italy, with around 15,000 deaths, has been the nation hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, and has had to adopt strict lockdowns. The balcony catch-playing video was inspirational: It showed neighbors maintaining community, and a beloved game, while safely keeping their distance.
I praised the video when I wrote an essay for America Magazine suggesting we keep baseball alive by playing family catch or modified backyard baseball. This week, one of the men in the video, Andrea De Angelis, a 51-year-old comic book store owner, dropped a line and we chatted.
The balcony catch-players, De Angelis and Marco Spiga, are part of Italy’s robust baseball community of some 290 teams and over 21,000 players. They play for Nettuno, a town of 50,000 that has long dominated the Italian leagues, which, along with the Netherlands, sit atop the pantheon of European baseball.
The idea for balcony catch “came from baseball abstinence due to covid-19,” De Angelis wrote me. His neighbor Spiga played for him as a youth player. “We decided to make throws from the balcony,” said Angelis. “The following week, taken by the success of the initiative, we replied with two balls simultaneously.”
They washed their hands, of course. No spitballs, either, “because it’s illegal as well as dangerous,” De Angelis added.
De Angelis of one of those club sports pillars who’s done pretty much everything in baseball, from playing, coaching and training, to umpiring and running a scoreboard. He’s mostly played second base and outfield, and, these days, sticks to slow-pitch softball.
As the outbreak slows, “Italian baseball, like all sports, is waiting for the green light to reorganize the calendars,” said De Angelis. He predicts youth categories will be able “meet in the summer there should be no problems.”
For now, De Angelis has been doing his part for an initiative organized by the Italian Baseball Federation’s comitato nazionale tecnici, or CNT, its technical committee. It’s called #noicialleniamoacasa, or “We train at home”, and it’s been promoting home training videos, geared toward youth players, for “those who must continue at home.”
What the federation wants, said De Angelis, is to spread a “message that we’re not giving up.”
John W. Miller
