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Writer and musician Dave Bidini has uncovered a story that will make you feel good about being a sports fan again. Bidini, guitarist for the Rheostatics and author of
Tropic of Hockey, spends a season in picturesque Nettuno, Italy, with the local Serie B baseball team, the Peones, and reveals a spirit and attitude about sport long forgotten in North America. These Italian Bad News Bears have nicknames like Golden One, Skunk Bravo, and the Emperor, but the most interesting character is their manager, Pietro Monaco. An Italian baseball legend, Pietro has been infected by the game like a virus. His passion for the sport makes him a demanding taskmaster as he attempts to motivate a group of unpaid players who have little to gain--win or lose. He is the type of inspirational (and imperfect) figure one used to read about in old sports novels, and his story is the essence of Bidini's book.
At moments Bidini acts as travel guide, as he explores his temporary seaside home. At other times, Baseballissimo reads like a memoir of Bidini's own journey. Having spent his youth casting off his Italian roots, Bidini finds himself an outsider in his mother country, but as he rediscovers his love of baseball he also reconnects with his cultural heritage. Reviewing this book requires the kinds of cliches that would be banal in other circumstances but are unavoidable here. Heartwarming, inspirational, and touching, Baseballissimo delivers exactly what you'd expect from a book about young men playing a sport for no reward other than the love of the game. Readers will cheer the Peones because one never has to wonder what motivates them, or their Canadian friend. --Moe Berg
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Product Description
In the spring of 2002, Dave Bidini set off for Nettuno, Italy, with his wife, Janet, and their two small children, in search of his favourite summer game, baseball. Nettuno was his destination because this town, south of Rome, has been the baseball capital of Italy since 1944, when the game was introduced by the American GIs who liberated the region. Bidini wanted to spend time in a town where everyone is as nuts about the game as he is, and in Nettuno, they love the game so much that they hand out baseball gloves and bats to children taking their first communion.
For six months Bidini followed the fortunes of the Serie B Peones, Nettunese to the core. At the same time he was also learning about his own heritage, having spent his youth vigorously ignoring his Italianness. The result of his summer in Italy is vintage Bidini: a funny, perceptive, and engrossing book that takes readers far beyond the professional sport to the game that people around the world love to play.
From the Hardcover edition.
