In the spring of 2002, Dave Bidini set off for Nettuno, Italy, with his wife, Janet, and their two small children, in search of his favourite summer game, baseball. Nettuno was his destination because this town, south of Rome, has been the baseball capital of Italy since 1944, when the game was introduced by the American GIs who liberated the region. Bidini wanted to spend time in a town where everyone is as nuts about the game as he is, and in Nettuno, they love the game so much that they hand out baseball gloves and bats to children taking their first communion.

For six months Bidini followed the fortunes of the Serie B Peones, Nettunese to the core. At the same time he was also learning about his own heritage, having spent his youth vigorously ignoring his Italianness. The result of his summer in Italy is vintage Bidini: a funny, perceptive, and engrossing book that takes readers far beyond the professional sport to the game that people around the world love to play.


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Nettuno Peones, 2002
Stronzo with a Smiting Pole
The Pasta Ghetto
Bob Dylan and the Drag Bunt
Mia Palanca, Mia
Nettuno at Montefiascone
There Came a One-Armed Man
1975
Roma at Nettuno
A Pocket of Brick and Mortar
1985
Nettuno at Salerno
Nettuno at Sardinia
Baseball in the Jaws of War
The Eye of the Pig
Montefiascone at Nettuno
The Music of the Mound
Father Baseball
The Fires of Rome
1987
The Eternal Game
Nettuno at Roma
Mike the Duck Must Die
Salerno at Nettuno
1992
The Italian
Palermo at Nettuno
If They Don’t Win, It’s a Shame
The Night of the Wolves
Coming Home
Baseballissimo

Epilogue: A Play at the Plate
Acknowledgments


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Dave Bidini is the rhythm guitarist for the Rheostatics and the author of On a Cold Road and Tropic of Hockey, which was adapted for television as the Gemini Award-winning documentary Hockey Nomad. He lives in Toronto.


From the Hardcover edition.

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