translation by Martina Ferlisi
An italian idea
Baseball for the blind is a sport from home.
And by home, if you are wondering, we mean Italy, still…
It was developed, in the nineties, by a group of ex baseball players of Fortitudo Montenegro in Bologna, led by Alfredo Meli, who created the AIBXC Onlus (Italian Association of Baseball for the Blind) in order to spread the new sport.
The first match was played in Casalecchio di Reno (BO) on 16th October 1994.
We, wanderers by vocation, are very surprised to meet (during Games Without Barriers) a sport born in Italy. This is the first time in two years.
However, they, the athletes, play baseball for over twenty years. Today there are ten teams throughout Italy (and an increasing number abroad, but we will talk about this further on).
Alfonso Somma plays baseball for 12 years (he is 44) and he is the captain of Rome All Blinds.
“I discovered this sport in Bologna, while I was there to take a course at the Cavazza Institute. Talking with my classmates, I discovered the existence of the baseball for the blind”.
Before baseball, Alfonso practiced Athletics: “then, when I went up, for the first time, on the diamond, I fell in love with this sport. And I got a taste for it. This was because, from one side, I was physically prepared thanks to the discipline practiced; from the other side because, being with these friends for a year, I started to practice baseball every Wednesday after class. After a while, it was spring and Alfredo Meli himself told me that if I wanted I could try to play with a team.”
Thus, he begins to move regularly from Bologna to Milan to train and play with the Thunder 5, a Milanese team. The passage from the Thunder 5 to Roma All Blinds was long: “I am from Rome. I came back from Bologna and I continued my life. There was not a baseball team for the blind in my town, so I trained with a track and field club and I played with the Florence, since this team was geographically closer to me.
After two years, a former schoolmate from Ravenna created a team called Qvinta Ravenna, Qvinta because it was the fifth team created in this movement. “He has gathered all former students of the Institute Cavazza, and so for a bit ‘of years I played in this team, where, in reality, there was almost no one from Ravenna, we were as the past Internazionale all foreigners … “– jokes Alfonso. “In 2007 – he continues – we won the championship with this team and after this, it was a bit strange that in Rome there was not a team, so with the help of some people we have proposed to create a team in Rome. Therefore, with the help of the association Bolognese AIBXC we started to collect people interested in a test day, day that went very well and from all those people that the team was born. In 2008, we debuted in the Italian Cup, and in 2013, we won it.”
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Exporting the made in Italy
“In 2013 we won the Italian Cup!” – Romualdo Signori, called simply Aldo, the coach of Roma All Blinds, intervenes proud. 76 years old, artisan, Aldo was a baseball coach for able-bodied, but when he received the proposal of coaching a team of blinds, he did not reject the challenge. He is just back from a very special trip to the US, “we’re going to teach baseball to the Americans!” – He adds, joking but not too much. Exporting Italian excellence abroad is, indeed, the new challenge of baseball for the blind, particularly in the US where baseball is one of the major national sports and where there is a variation of baseball for the blind players, the beepball. This is, however, very far from the original sport, as a player of the same team of the hitter throws the ball, the playing field is actually a grass field and not the diamond and to score a point the player has just to do a short ride.
Baseball for our national blinds, instead, besides being very similar to the traditional baseball, Alfonso explains, “it is a very technical sport, and the player has the possibility to run completely on its own, even though with vocal aids.” The ball has inside a bell that makes noise, one of the bases has a sound signal, while in the others there are seeing players, beating two pallets to signal their position to the player. “Of course – Alfonso continues – there are sound signals, but in the end the movement is yours, you are not tied to the guide, such as in athletics. There is not the figure of the pitcher, the hitter is the same to throw the ball and then hit it with the bat.” Therefore, the hit phase is complicated: “No one can help you to beat, while in the phase of defence you have the responsibility of the whole team, and at the same time, you can be helped by your teammates, and there’s the emotion of the relationship with the public “.
A silent public, careful not to distract who is in the diamond, and that we hope it will become more and more numerous!
Thanks to Alfonso Somma and Romualdo Signori for the kindness and for the patience.
The usual thanks to ROMA – Rehabilitation & Outcome Measures Assessment, Andrea Pompili, Pina Esposito and Marco Tofani.