Nick Fanti on His Experience in the World Baseball Classic

by Nick Fanti

My experience in the world baseball classic is something that I can’t stop talking about.

A moment I want to talk about is the first game vs Mexico. I will never say the Italian team was an underdog in this bracket because we were not. We belonged there because we knew what kind of team we had and we showed that we belonged in that game We were down four going into the bottom of the ninth and we were actually the home team against the host Mexico with one of the best closers in baseball on the mound in Roberto Osuna.

We came back to score five runs without Mexico recording a single out. We dog piled, and I got some tv time. You will never see a stadium flip from loud to silent like that stadium did that night. But the significance of this game to me was crazy and different because it’s not like baseball at any other level where guys are worried about getting sent up or down. The issue of guys not rooting for each other or not playing for one another, I wanted every single guy to go out there that day and have the best day of their lives and that’s the feeling you get when your playing with a real team and I didn’t throw a single pitch in that game. It’s funny because people were telling me they were proud of me for walking past a camera during the celebration like I contributed to the win and I did by the way because I stayed in the same spot with the same piece of gum in my mouth for the whole inning.

Now let’s go ahead to when I pitched, the game started to get away from us against Puerto Rico and there were three guys who did not pitch for team Italy and me being one of them. I remember getting asked to go warm up by the bullpen coach and throwing the first two balls right into the ground with Mexican fans watching and laughing. Than the coach waves to me and pointed to the field implying I was going into the game. From there I was ready so I just started focusing on my breathing and living in the moment. When our team made the third out in the top of the inning I told myself to take it slow and do what you normally do. Throw strikes, and make them hit it. I threw the last warm up pitch and walked out of the bullpen and I did this because I knew if I ran I wouldn’t be able to slow the game down. Than I took a light jog to the mound and took a second to enjoy the moment and where I was at because you really never know.

After that I was locked in and the first batter stepped in. The weird thing is that I just felt how I always feel when I throw, but the only difference is I could not hear a thing. The hitters to me were nameless and faceless and I just thought about doing what I do well and not what they do. I felt so locked in that I thought T.J. Rivera–the guy I struck out–was Carlos Correa. After the third strike to him I walked off the mound and the catcher Drew Butera gave me the ball and that’s when it hit me how big of a deal this experience was. I watched people on tv do this my whole life and on this day I was that guy.

That was one of the best feelings to me.