HOUSTON — Sam Aldegheri, still in his Team Italy uniform hours after he came out of the game, simply wasn’t ready to take it off Saturday afternoon.
He has pitched 95 games throughout his eight-year pro career — 79 games in the minors, seven in the major leagues for the Los Angeles Angels, and nine in the Italian League — but has never felt like this.
Aldegheri, the first player to be born and raised in Italy to reach the major leagues, put on one of the most dazzling pitching performances in World Baseball Classic pool history, suffocating Brazil’s lineup in an 8-0 victory.
He pitched 4⅔ shutout innings, only the second pitcher to pitch into the fifth inning in WBC pool play this year, striking out eight batters and allowing just one hit.
Sure, he has had better performances in his career, but never one more meaningful.
“It’s different,’’ Aldegheri said. “Play for your country is something that you can't really explain, but you can feel it, feel all the support from back home. It's amazing.’’
The nerves began when he awoke, knowing what this meant for his country, and he became emotional standing in the bullpen and listening to the Italian national anthem.
“I had goosebumps all over my body,’’ he said. “It was chilling. … I was just feeling deep inside, I was just trying to think about the game.
“Those moments are hard. You have all these feelings back home, everything goes by your mind. So it was really cool.’’
This is a 24-year-old who was born in Verona, Italy, and the only baseball he watched as a kid was YouTube videos of Dodgers three-time Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw. There were a few baseball fields near his house, and with his older brother, Mattia, a right-handed pitcher, he grew up as a left-handed pitcher on the baseball diamond instead of the soccer field.
He was discovered as a 15-year-old in a tournament in Spain by a Kansas City Royals scout, and in 2019, the Philadelphia Phillies believed in him enough to pay him a $210,000 signing bonus. Aldegheri, the son of a father who works in a glass factory and a mother who works in a bakery, went off to America to chase his dreams.
He has pitched mostly in the minors for teams called the BlueClaws and Pandas and Bees and Threshers, and was traded in 2024 to the Angels for closer Carlos Estevez. He has pitched in seven major-league games for the Angels.
He still believes in himself, still wants to be an inspiration, and knows his Saturday performance could resonate throughout all of Italy.
“I think the game is growing,’’ he said. “Back home in Italy, I have been in a lot of camps during the offseason working with kids, and I have seen a lot of experienced coaches trying to help the game to grow. …
“They are starting to do these academies every region, every city. I have seen a lot of kids, they start from 6 to 8. Hopefully next couple years we will have better technology, too, more sponsors hopefully come in and just try to get better.’’
Says Italy catcher Kyle Teel of the Chicago White Sox: “Doing what he does on the mound and throwing like he can, it just goes to show how big baseball is in Italy, and how baseball is a big part of Italian culture.’’
It’s not just Aldegheri, but everyone from Team Italy is doing their part to let the world know they have arrived on the baseball scene, and are having a blast doing it.
Their 2½ hour flight from Phoenix to Houston was like a comedy club, with even the major league players saying they have never seen anything like it. They took the mic, sang Italian songs, and danced in the aisles. “I've never seen anything like what happened on that plane,’’ Teel said. “Just Andrea Bocelli bumping on the speaker. Everyone singing it at the top of their lungs. Nobody sitting in their seats. It was unbelievable. So much fun.’’
Said Italy outfielder Dante Nori of the Philadelphia Phillies, who hit two homers: “I’ve never been on a flight like that. That was something really special to me. We were laughing, dancing, just having a great old time on there.
“Our bond is unreal.’’
They’re the only team that has an espresso machine in the dugout and they forced Nori to chug some espresso after each of his first two home runs, which he promptly spit out on the dugout floor. They even have parmesan cheese and olive oil in the dugout just in case someone needs a snack.
“The coffee machine is because in Italy we drink coffee about 20 times a day,’’ Italy manager Francisco Cervelli says. “It's a tradition. You're walking down the road. You see a coffee spot, get some coffee, then you chitchat, and then keep walking and do the same thing all over and over again.
“That's how Italy is.’’
Pardon Nori if it takes him a little longer to get accustomed to that espresso tradition.
“I do not like coffee,’’ Nori says, “so it did not taste great. The first one, especially, I was like, 'Ugh,’ but the second one, I kind of liked that one a little bit more.’’
Who knows, can Italy one day not just be a team that fills out a WBC tournament pool, but become a legitimate power?
“I am not naive in the fact that I am Italian-American, and we are trying to represent Italy in the right way,’’ Italy first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino of the Kansas City Royals says. “What we are trying to do is open the door for more guys to play. For more guys like Sam, more Italian-born major leaguers, more guys that can make a competitive team in this Classic.
“I think that's the long-term goal, as long as the Classic keeps continuing, for this team to be full of pure-bred Italians. The goal is to open that door and show, 'Hey, Italy has got some ball players and all you have to do is invest in them a little bit, just invest some time equity into them.' "
And, on Saturday afternoon, you had to look no further than Aldegheri for proof what could lay ahead for Italian baseball.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sam Aldegheri WBC performance shows growth of baseball in Italy
