From BR Bullpen
The Italy national baseball team is a national team of Italy and is controlled by the Federazione Italiana Baseball & Softball. It represents the nation in senior-level men's international competition. The team is a member of the CEB. They have generally been the second-best country in Europe after the Dutch national team and finished first or second in the European Championship every time between 1969 and 1999. Since then, their fortunes have faded somewhat, as they finished third, fifth, second and seventh in the next four European Championships as other countries gained ground. Italy was ridiculed for its reliance on Americans with Italian names in the 2006 World Baseball Classic. While this was unusual, Italy has often had a fair number of Latino or American players of Italian descent (taking advantage of Italy's extremely liberal citizenship laws of 1912); in the 2007 Baseball World Cup, for instance, they comprised about half of the roster with native Italians making up the rest.
