The Road Goes On Forever

BY KEVIN KERNAN

Here is something you did not know about the miracle run of 5-0 Team Italy, which plays Venezuela Monday night in the semifinals of the World Baseball Classic.

They just did not luck into becoming the darlings of the WBC, they worked hard to get to this position under general manager Ned Colletti. Not only did Colletti put together a great staff and a group of hungry ballplayers led by team captain Vinnie Pasquantino – MLB players with a chip on their shoulder – he went old school, too.

How old school?

Colletti hired an old-fashioned advance scout, yes, an advance scout, to scout the WBC opposition just like baseball teams used to do when the Yankees were winning three straight World Series titles in 1998, ’99 and 2000.

Imagine that.

Imagine relying on a tried and tested advance scout, a true baseball man, to help get you where you want to go as a team in 2026? And Francisco Cervelli’s team has gone where no one expected them to go – undefeated headed into the semifinals against Venezuela Monday night at loanDepot Park in Miami.

It is the best story of the WBC; a tournament filled with remarkable stories.

The scout Colletti hired was someone he trusted from when he was GM of the Dodgers, Mark Weidemaier, who was getting set to manage in a college summer wood bat league, the Coastal Plain League. Weidemaier will manage the team in Asheboro, North Carolina, a team with the wonderful name ZooKeepers.

Why the ZooKeepers?

Asheboro is home to the North Carolina Zoo, an impressive zoo that houses 1,700 animals of more than 250 species, one of only two state supported zoos in the United States.

Now in baseball terms, I am old enough to remember the Bronx Zoo of Yankees fame, so it is pretty cool to have the Asheboro ZooKeepers playing baseball and I plan to make a trip to visit them this summer as well as to the real zoo in that town.

One of the key players in the zoo is an elephant named C’sar, orphaned in Kenya and arrived at the North Carolina Zoo on July 25, 1978 – the same time George Steinbrenner’s Bronx Zoo was all the rage – a nickname that was solidified by reliever Sparky Lyle in his eye-opening 1979 memoir written with Peter Golenbock: The Bronx Zoo: The astonishing inside look at the World Champion New York Yankees and their coast-to-coast rivals.

Not to mention their own rivals inside the Yankees clubhouse.

Weidemaier, 71, has been around baseball a long time. Colletti is 71, too, and I’ve known him since his days as the Cubs public relations director before going to work for the San Francisco Giants and then onto the Dodgers, so this is a story for the aged and the ages, and I love it. I’ve got them beat by two years as well.

Baseball keeps you young, and talking to Weidemaier is always an energizing baseball experience for me. He has coached and managed and scouted around the world and has worked at every level from college to minors to majors to internationally, including working with these major league clubs: Dodgers, Reds, Diamondbacks, Nationals, Yankees, Angels and Cleveland. He knows baseball, development and scouting inside out — a great hire by Colletti to help Team Italy shock the WBC, including that monstrous win over Team USA in pool play.

“I love the WBC. It is so cool, it’s got more flair, more emotion, it is not just high spin rate and home runs. It just seems like a purer way to play the game.’’

Weidemaier is part of what I call The Lost Generation that has been phased out by MLB new age Ivy League leadership, but Weidemaier is a baseball survivor so I was thrilled to talk some WBC with him on Sunday as he was getting his latest reports done for Team Italy.

That is what we do here at BallNine. We find The Story behind the story.

“I’m working on Venezuela as we speak,’’ Weidemaier told BallNine. “This has been a blast.’’

He then rattled off some of those scouting areas like “opposing base-running, aggressive runners, opposing defense, bunt plays, catcher’s arm, defense,’’ and included in all that is each individual player.

You see, real baseball is much more than spin rate and velocity and a host of metrics. Weidemaier can break it all down. Of course, the players deserve all the credit for doing all that winning work for Italy. Their defense has been sharp; their hitting has been timely and has come in bunches, and their pitching has been solid.

Weidemaier was quick to praise Venezuela for their play against Japan and the 8-5 win over the defending champions. “These guys put a lot of pressure on Team Japan, they played hard,’’ Weidemaier said. “Hard turns at first, forced throws to keep them at the bag, 1 through 9 they just busted their ass to first, they played with their hair on fire, the bench was excited, it reminded me of all those years I spent covering Winter Ball; it was exactly like a Winter Ball postseason or championship-type game.’’

That has been a great part of the WBC and as I mentioned the other day on X, it is fun to watch major league players play hard.

“Our club,’’ he said of Italy, “younger guys, passionate as hell with the first baseman leading the charge. It has been great to watch. I love the WBC. It is so cool, it’s got more flair, more emotion, it is not just high spin rate and home runs. It just seems like a purer way to play the game.’’

That is a tremendous observation.

Weidemaier made it clear he is thankful to Colletti to give him this opportunity.

“Ned and I started talking about this in February,’’ Weidemaier said. “He put me in touch with the guys and here we go. Ned was wonderful. I love the guy. The guy was great to me when I worked for the Dodgers, just tremendous. I have all the respect in the world for him and besides that, of all the guys in baseball – and I was involved for 47 years – there are guys you keep hearing from and Ned stayed in touch and is a good friend. That means a hell of a lot, especially hearing from a superior like that in a work environment.

“This guy has kept in touch with me through my times managing in Mexico, Korea; everywhere I’ve been, I’ve heard from Ned Colletti.’’

The bonds of baseball run deep. In a way, it is kind of like the 1993 Robert Earl Keen song “The Road Goes on Forever’’.

For both Weidemaier and Colletti, that baseball road has now taken them to the WBC and the incredible story of Team Italy with a tremendous coaching staff that includes Ron Wotus, Jorge Posada, Dave Righetti, Frank Menechino, Sal Fasano, Allard Baird and manager Francisco Cervelli. I know all of them and they are all Baseball Men. Baird is a former GM now coaching first base, who lives half the year in Italy. Yankee fans are connected to this team because of Cervelli, Posada and Righetti. I’m hoping someday some MLB team is smart enough to hire Posada as a manager, bench coach or hitting coach. When Cervelli got the job, Posada was the first call he made.

The players have responded to this staff.

At the start of training, Posada said, “I’m excited. I’m here to help Francisco and being another set of eyes and giving my thoughts of what I see, not only hitting but overall.’’

After the win over the USA, an emotional Ned Colletti told my friend Bob Nightengale, “I reminded these guys that their great grandparents, their grandparents, their parents, came to America for a better life. The Italians, for most of their existence in that period of time, were afterthoughts. But look who helped dig out the New York subway system. It was Italians who helped build the Empire State Building. It was the Italians who cut hair, who made shoes. Italians would take on anything they could take on to assimilate and to have a chance of being in this country.’’

Weidemaier took on the advance scouting role to help his friend and to be involved in baseball in any way he could. After this he will go on to the Coastal Plain League and his job managing college players for the Asheboro ZooKeepers this summer.

The road goes on forever and Weidemaier has been all over the world. This summer though will be a much different journey to McCrary Park.

“This is a really good summer college league,’’ he told me. “And it’s actually for the first time in 47 years I will be kind of working at home a little bit because the ballpark is only 30 minutes from my house. It’s a beautiful ballpark, the city has put about $15 million in it over the last five years, we got turf – it looks like a miniature Fenway Park – it’s gorgeous. Got a good young general manager that played at the University of North Carolina, caught a little bit in the minor leagues by the name of Korey Dunbar and a really good ownership group, the Pugh brothers. It’s going to be good.’’

It is all good. WBC scouting to the Coastal Plain League. The road goes on forever.