TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 This summer, a group of Tampa Bay area high school baseball players will travel to northern Italy as part of an international service and cultural exchange mission called the Global Diamond Initiative.<\/p>\n
Andrew Turner, a long-time Bay area baseball coach, took his first steps as a child in the small mountain towns of northern Italy and has been there every summer since. Last year, his son, Athen, was able to play baseball in the small town of Porcia, and it left an impression.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were such gracious hosts, and when we met them, they (were) people you want to help,\u201d Turner said after a recent practice. \u201cIt was just something we really wanted to be involved in to help them grow the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
This summer, Turner put together a group of 12 Bay area players from five high schools to play a three-game friendly in July against a team in Porcia, Italy.<\/p>\n
The team has held fundraisers for equipment needed for the team in Porcia, to one day help them build a field of their own.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to bring these guys over there and maybe be able to rejuvenate them and realign their perspectives about what the game looks like,\u201d Turner said.<\/p>\n
His son has seen it firsthand, and he hopes every one of his teammates comes away the same message he did after last summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are definitely grateful for what we have here, and they (my teammates) need to realize that. It\u2019s not only to go over there and win every game, it\u2019s to help them realize we are there to help them,\u201d said Athen, who plays baseball at Seminole High School.<\/p>\n
Proof that baseball really is the international language, and on this trip it will be forming a bond that goes way beyond the diamond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 This summer, a group of Tampa Bay area high school baseball players will travel to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1238,274,3816,1236,2200,128567,115,110,135,137,136,278,2032],"class_list":["post-334251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-sports","tag-app-top-stories","tag-baseball","tag-florida-sports","tag-instagram-bn9","tag-mike-cairns","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-top-stories","tag-trending-topics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}