Professor, Sergio Pecorelli (Chairman of the Dept Obstetrics and Gynecology and Director of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology at the University of Brescia. President of the University Research Council at the University of Brescia, Italy. Dean of the School of Obstetrics at the University of Brescia.), has been involved in a project concerning baseball at the University of Brescia for the past two years where he has been teaching the game to his students as a motor science class.
“It’s been a successful experience thus far, and we’ve even been thinking about expanding it. We’d like to get to the point where we are in a successful collaboration with other universities in the US, Caribbean and Latin America, all the countries where baseball is considered as one of the main sports,” stated Professor Pecorelli.
Baseball’s influence on Pecorelli can be traced back to the University of California Irvine where he worked. It was then where his son began to play baseball in a local Little League. “He was a left handed first baseman, who eventually even drew some interest from the Toronto Blue Jays later on in his playing days. When we moved back to Italy my son decided to join CUS Brescia (baseball) and it was there that our first contacts with the sports organization came about,” Pecorelli.
The two individuals out of the CUS Brescia Baseball organization who got the ball rolling on the project were Stefano Sbardolini (responsible for the baseball sector of CUS Brescia) and Artemio Carra (President of CUS Brescia). When the project got underway CUS Brescia had just been promoted to the Series A in the Italian Federal League, and also had been growing and running a successful youth program. Sbardolini was tasked with bringing in the right person to compliment their collaboration with the university, and his goal find an individual with knowledge and background of the game of baseball both State Side and in Italy, that person was Don Landolphi. Landolphi was a coach and professor at Brooklyn College, but with a past in Italian baseball as well that dates all the way back to 1972.
This project with the University of Brescia and CUS Baseball is currently still under contract for the 2014-2015 academic year, but is expected to be renewed and continued into the future with the goal of gaining a better understanding and appreciation for the game of baseball.
