On Sunday and Monday, we published two different articles about an organizational meeting by Italian Baseball in Tirrenia on this weekend. Federation president Riccardo Fraccari talked about the planned professional league, starting in 2010 and about a few changes for the 2009 Italian Baseball League season.
Especially one fact is producing some headlines around European baseball: the opening for EU citizens to play in the IBL. FIBS Communication Manager Riccardo Schiroli was so kind to send us a few clarifications to make a few things clear, which might were misleading after the two articles:
1) On Sunday Riccardo Fraccari talked about the possibility to let EU citizens to have the status of Italian players to the eight top teams. No decision was made and no decision could be made, because it is anyway up to the Board of Directors.
2) It is not that Europeans “couldn’t” play in Italy previously. They had to play as “import” players. And it was not a FIBS rule, but a rule coming from the Olympic Committee and imposed to all of the Federations that did not have a pro championship. Now the rule is not mandatory anymore.
3) If the opening is confirmed by FIBS Board, EU citizens will anyway be limited by the law on the “Italian School of Baseball” (or ASI players: an ASI player is a player who is Italian citizen and has played at least six years in the Italian championships). To make it clear: in the Italian Baseball League teams will have 24 man rosters, will be allowed to sign four imports (five last season) who are non EU citizens and will have to put at least 12 ASI players on the roster and five on the field.
4) Players from Malta and from San Marino are considered ASI players, even if they will never be able to represent Italy in international baseball. This is due to a rule of the Olympic Committee named “accordo frontaliero”, that allows countries who share a border with Italy and do not have organized activity at the same level in a particular sport, to make an agreement with a particular Federation and to be considered (to put it straight) a region of Italy in that sport matter
5) As the Italian Federation, we posted a form on the English Version of our web site (that due to the change of Content Management System is at the moment offline) stating, more or less, “if you are a baseball of softball player of Italian heritage and wish to represent Italy in international competition, please contact us”. In fact, we did receive a lot of forms completed, but none by top players. Mr. Van Nes got it wrong, but this time probably it’s my fault, for not taking my time to explain properly what happened.