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Tony Vitello grew up in a baseball family in the baseball-crazed city of St. Louis and spent a decade playing and coaching the sport at the University of Missouri. So it's only natural Vitello is using a concept he attributes to former St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa as he begins his first head coaching job at Tennessee. Vitello remembers...

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This past Saturday, Roberto Angotti was at Milford High along with Lou and Chris Colabello, premiering his documentary “Italian American Baseball.” To know the journey Chris Colabello took from Milford to the major leagues, it helps to know the story of his father, Lou. And to know the professional and international baseball career of Lou, it helps...

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In the "Italian American Baseball Family" filmmaker Roberto Angotti shares the captivating story about how Italian Americans "assimilated into popular culture through America's favorite pastime in his new hour-long Italian American Baseball Family documentary." The documentary details stories of those Italians who left home between 1880 and 1920 an...

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The new year is officially upon us, but for Gary Perone 2017 was a year to remember. Perone, the assistant general manager for the Brooklyn Cyclones, was named the Italian American baseball executive of the year by the Italian American Baseball Foundation. "I was humbled and grateful," said the Tottenville resident Perone. "Very humbling because wh...

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“Italians were once second-class citizens in the United States and invisible in baseball before players like Tony Lazzeri and Joe DiMaggio rose to prominence. Not having an appreciation of your heritage is like an olive tree without roots. Baseball is a part of mine.” —Roberto Angotti. In his new, award-winning documentary, “The Italian American Ba...

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They came, they met, they left. What they talked about only they know for now. But Pawtucket Red Sox Chairman Larry Lucchino certainly appeared to be in a good mood as he made his way from the Levi Lincoln Room in City Hall to the elevator a little after 1 p.m. Friday. Lucchino, accompanied by two men he did not identify, was in Worcester for what...

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Imagine a great Sunday Italian feast, only this time with 100 members of your extended family. And at the helm, sits the incomparable Bobby Valentine. For those in attendance Thursday evening at Carmine’s in Brooklyn, this epic gathering was a reality, led by the former New York Mets manager in support of the Italian American Baseball Foundation. V...

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Past and present MLB players and executives as well as a traveling delegation from Federazione Italiana Baseball Softball (FIBS) celebrated everyting Italian and embracedBobby Valentine premiato alla cena IABF 2017 (Chris Heider) the challenges that lie ahead for the 501(c)(3) charity, the Italian American Baseball Foundation (IABF), at the second...

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With 15 WPIAL football championships and 11 boys basketball titles, Aliquippa High School is known as a two-sport school. But Natalino Palombo represented a different era. As a senior in 1946, he helped lead the Quips to their second — and last — WPIAL championship as an infielder. It preceded a long and fruitful career as both a baseball player an...

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Since I began writing for this blog, my articles have dealt mainly with famous indigenous inhabitants of Southern Italy/Sicily. It behooves me to mention, though, since the destruction of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1861, the majority of the members of our ethnos were born outside the borders of the modern state of Italy in what I like to te...

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