Italian League

[Mike_Piazza]

The italian championship will start next 13 April with the opening game between Parma and Grosseto.
9 teams will play to win the title ,the famous "scudetto".
Italian Champion is Fortitudo Bologna (sponsor Italeri) that will try to defend the title vs Grosseto (European champion) ,Nettuno,Rimini,Parma and San Marino (the best teams).
Grosseto looks very good even if they have lost Italian-american David Rollandini that signed for american AA.
Every team can sign a maximum of 5 strangers,but italian-americans thanks to their italian citizenship can play as italian so the league is full of americans with italian heritage.
This year there are a lot of players with MLB and AAA experience.
here you can read the import players

http://baseballnow.altervista.org/Sq...rcato_2006.htm
Grosseto for example,that will try to defend his european title in June hosting european serieshas signed 3B Tony Torcato (last year with Giants in MLB) Victor Gutierrez (AAA experience) Valera Yohanny , Rene Miniel
and Jaime Navarro (all with MLB experience).
Grosseto has italian ace Riccardo de Santis and signed ita-ame Gino

Lollio,a great OF for italian championship.
Bologna is strong too,they have 5 very good dominicans (Jesus Matos last year was the best pitcher of the league) and the best italians (Liverziani,Dallospedale,Pantaleoni) and 2 ita-ame pitchers like Todd Incantalupo and Fabio Milano.
Bologna has solid pitching,great defense they will try to win the european series and the italian championship again.
Links :www.fibs.it
www.baseball-softball.it
www.baseball.it
http://baseballnow.altervista.org/
www.fortitudobaseball.com
www.bbcgrosseto.it

To watch some games try ON THURSDAY this link at 10 PM (ita hour) looking for italian tv RAI SPORTS : http://wwitv.com/portal.htm

[Mike_Piazza]

mms://fastreal.fastweb.it/raisporthigh at 4 PM eastern Time for opening game Parma-Grosseto.

[edsachs1]

Thanks for the info, I'm definitley going to try and watch the Grosseto today. Is there an Italian season or just a championship? Also how does the European Championship work? and is it broadcast over the internet? Thanks

[Mike_Piazza]

Here results and scoreboards

http://www.fibs.it/cnc/baseball/2006/a1/Calenda-A1.htm

[Cubano100%]

Hey, Mike. last year there were several Cuban defectors playing in the Italian League. Do you know wether or not any are playing this year?

Roberto Colina
Bill Ortega
Jesus Atmetller
Julio Villalon


Can you explain why do you have different series such as A1, A2, etc?



Thanks,

[Mike_Piazza]

No cubans this year in first division (A1).
The A1 league in Italy is the first division ,A2 the second division and the last 2 of the first division will be relegated in A2 next year,the first team of A2 will play next year in A1 (the A1 league will have 8 teams next year).
President of the Federation want to change this system and organize franchises like MLB,without promotions and demotions,but the Olympic Italian Committee is against a closed professional league.

[DaClyde]

I recently discovered that baseball card sets were issued for the 2002 and 2003 Italian Baseball League seasons by a now-defunct website called SportCards.it. Does anyone have any information about these cards, or maybe contact with someone in Italy that might be able to help me construct the checklists? I found evidence of the cards on the Fortitudo Bologna website as they had images of the cards attached to some of the player listings in their player archive. Bologna seems to sit somewhere in the middle of the sets, based on numbering, so it looks like the 2002 set may be over 200 cards, and the 2003 set closer to 100-120. Any help would be appreciated!