Michael Schmidt (WBSC Executive Director), Roberto Fabbricini (Italian Olympic Commitee Secretary General) and Riccardo Fraccari (WBSC President) at the press conference in Rome

by Riccardo Schiroli



The World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) called a press conference in Rome (Italy) as an update to the process of Oympic reistatement and to introduce the forthcoming Premier 12 and the participation of an All Europe Team to the Asia Winter League.

“The Tokyo 2020 announcement was huge for us” said President Riccardo Fraccari. “But there’s still work to do. The IOC will now assign observers to baseball and softball, we need to be at our best. Still, making the 2020 Games is a great accomplishment, but our final goal is to be on the program also for the future”.

Fraccari‘s mind is already set to the future: “The Premier12 opens early November and that will showcase the best 12 national programs. Then we will have a European team participating in the Asia Winter League. If we can make baseball and softball global, then we will have a better chance to be an added value to the Olympic movement”.

The Asia Winter League was launched in 2012 by the Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) and involved originally teams of top prospects from Taiwan, Korea, Japan and the Dominican Republic. Japan won the first edition, Korea the second in 2013.

The League will resume (opening day on November 23) after a one year stop and Team Europe will compete with teams from the CPBL, the CTBA (Chinese Taipei Baseball Association), KBO (Korea Baseball Organization) and NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball).

Schedule Asia Winter League

The 5 teams will play a 16 game regular season. The top 4 will play 4 game series (first place team versus fourth Place team, third place versus second place) in which the number 3 and 4 seed will need 2 consecutive wins to advance. The winners will play (on December 20) one game for the title, the losers will play one game for third place.

“I am honored to be the first to welcome Team Europe” said through a video message Wu Chih Yang, the CPBL Commissioner “In March during the Global Baseball Matches in Tokyo Team Europe hung tight with the mighty Samurai Japan. I was deeply impressed and I am extremely grateful with the full support from WBSC President Fraccari in assembling a young Team Europe to participate in our Winter League. Our ultimate goal” said Wu on a final note “is to promote the globalization of baseball and support the game’s reinstatement to the Olympics”.

WBSC Executive Director Michael Schmidt explained that the team that will participate in the tournament is simply the second step of a very succesful project: “We were very statisfied with the way the coaching staff worked in March, so we discussed it with Steve Janssen and Marco Mazzieri, who were manager and bench coach in Tokyo and they selected the coaching staff”.

The manager of Team Europe will be Gilberto Gerali, who serves as bench coach for Mazzieri on Team Italy and is the manager of Parma in the Italian Baseball League.

Renny Duarte, a former professional pitcher working on the coaching staff of Team Spain, will serve as the pitching coach.

The Aruba native (and Aruba’s first Big Leaguer in the USA) and former Dutch National Team star Eugene Kingsale will be the hitting coach and outfield coordinator.

Ivan J. Rodriguez, Venezuela born manager of the Buchbinder Legionaere Regensburg in the German Baseball-Bundesliga, will serve as the infield coordinator.

General Manager Andrea D’Auria of Italy is working on the selection of the 28 man roster.

More news will follow on the roster: “We are not ready to make any name officially” pointed out Schmidt “But it won’t take long”.

Taiwanese Ambassador in Rome Stanley Kao (a former College baseball player) and Deputy Mission Head of the Japanese Embassy Hiroshi Yamauchi attended the press conference (pictured on the right).