For the first time in his life, Vinnie Pasquantino slept through an alarm. This was in November, and Pasquantino and his fiancée, Ryann, were in Italy on a trip that Team Italy manager Mike Piazza organized before the World Baseball Classic. It was a trip he called “Mission Classic,” bringing some of the American players with Italian heritage over to the country for a week, where they could meet and train with some of the best Italian-born players.

It was a bonding trip before the team gathered in Taiwan to play in the WBC, which begins this week. Anyway, back to the alarm. On the first day, Pasquantino was supposed to get up at about 8 a.m. for a daylong tour that started at the Vatican. He woke up at 9:50 a.m. Pasquantino usually wakes up before his alarm every day -- he can’t remember ever sleeping through one.