Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno announces plans to build first baseball-specific stadium

Mayor of Rome announces plans for stadium

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Baseball is about to have a permanent home in Rome.

Mayor Gianni Alemanno announced plans Sunday to donate a parcel of land for a new, baseball-specific stadium that can host international events. It will be built in Tor Vergata, an area south of the city where there’s a campus for the University of Rome.

“Rome doesn’t have a baseball stadium that can host international events and as a mayor, I felt I had to fill this deficiency,” Alemanno said in a statement issued following an executive meeting of the International Baseball Federation.

The meeting was the first under the direction of IBAF president Riccardo Fraccari, who hopes to expand the game on a global basis after it was removed from the Summer Olympics.

“I am positive baseball has a great potential in Rome,” Alemanno said.

Also on hand for the meeting was Dan Bonanno, who represented Major League Baseball.

“I think there can be an important cooperation between the city of Rome, IBAF and MLB,” Fraccari said. “I expect the synergy effect to be really strong.”

The executive committee also announced that Roberto Fabbricini, the former director of Olympic teams for the Italian Olympic Committee, will take over as executive director of the baseball federation. He had worked for the Italian team until the Beijing Olympics.