For the July 11 issue of the Post Register, I wrote a profile on Idaho Falls Chukars 18-year-old shortstop Marten Gasparini, who was born and raised in Italy. Here’s the link to the post on ChukarsExtra.com, and the full text for the story is below.
Marten Gasparini yearned for some home cooking.
He had just moved away from home. His parents were excellent cooks. He could barely make pasta.
College freshmen can relate to Gasparini’s pain. They can’t relate to much else.
Gasparini was in Burlington, N.C., for the start of his professional baseball career — 4,500 miles away from his native Italy.
A year earlier, Gasparini signed a contract with the Kansas City Royals, about a month after his 16th birthday. His $1.3 million signing bonus is still the European amateur record.
The shortstop has been with the Idaho Falls Chukars (a Kansas City Rookie-level affiliate) this entire season. Gasparini, 18, has struggled 23 games in, but he’s confident he’ll turn it around. He’s confident his community back home will remember him for more than the $1.3 million.
“The community is really going to appreciate my actions the moment I get to the highest level,” Gasparini told the Post Register. “At the moment, big number or not, I’m still in the minor leagues.”
Gasparini saw the 1999 baseball movie “For Love of the Game” around the age of 8. Before that, he knew hardly anything about baseball. Shortly after, Gasparini’s father bought him a baseball bat, and Gasparini discovered a club baseball team near his hometown of Alture.
Baseball isn’t a huge sport in Italy, but its relative obscurity helped attract Gasparini.
“Not from a hipster point of view, but yeah, it was something different,” Gasparini said. “As a 10-year-old, I wanted to do something new. It was a breath of fresh air.”
All of these factors led him to embrace America’s pastime.
Seven Italian-born players have played Major League Baseball, according to Baseball-Reference. One of them, Alex Liddi, currently plays for the Northwest Arkansas Naturals, Kansas City’s Double-A affiliate.
But Alex Maestri, an Italian pitcher formerly in the Chicago Cubs organization, was more responsible for Gasparini’s path.
Maestri once played for the Italian Baseball Academy. A 13-year-old Gasparini learned this and got in touch with then-Cubs scout Bill Holmberg, who is currently the Academy’s director.
“As soon as I saw him at 13, I knew we had a chance to create a superior player if we could work with him for a couple years,” Holmberg told Baseball America in 2013.
At 14, Gasparini joined the Academy, and he quickly caught the eyes of major league scouts.
Before he signed his contract with the Royals, some MLB scouts considered him the best European prospect they had ever seen, according to Baseball America. His MLB contract reflected that.
Gasparini’s $1.3 million signing bonus shattered the previous European record of $800,000, given to German outfielder Max Kepler by the Minnesota Twins.
“I did not expect anything like that coming,” Gasparini said. “People go crazy about it, but I try not to think about it. I try to take care of my family — my brother, my sister, my dad, my mom. What I earned is for them.”
The money helped ease his transition to the United States, despite Gasparini’s inability to cook much more than pasta and chicken (“Not pasta with chicken, though. [Italians] don’t do that,” he said). The Academy helped Gasparini learn English, and he was fluent by the age of 16.
“The excitement to be here as a professional baseball player overcame the fear of being in a new country,” Gasparini said.
The 6-foot, 165-pound Gasparini hit .191/.225/.250 (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage) in 68 at-bats with Burlington last year, but his slash line skyrocketed to .455/.500/.727 in 11 at-bats with the Chukars last summer.
Gasparini, ranked Kansas City’s 20th best prospect by FanGraphs.com before the season, has hit .233/.295/.349 with Idaho Falls this season (through Thursday).
But Gasparini’s slow start doesn’t concern his organization.
Royals’ senior coordinator for player development John Wathan is impressed with Gasparini’s speed and defensive tools (strong arm, good instincts), despite 12 fielding errors this season.
“He’ll be a good player one day,” Wathan said.
Idaho Falls hitting coach Andre David is encouraged by Gasparini’s development, namely with hitting fastballs and breaking balls. However, David said Gasparini needs to lay off tough pitches more often (Gasparini has 35 strikeouts, tied for the most in the Pioneer League) and get less down on himself after a bad performance.
The soft-spoken Gasparini said he’s more comfortable two seasons into his professional career. His accent is hardly noticeable, especially when he utilizes his vast English vocabulary. And the baseball struggles don’t worry him. He’s 18, and like David, he believes he’s developing.
Gasparini still misses his parents’ home cooking, though.
“I kinda got spoiled in Italy,” Gasparini said. “But that’s such a minor thing. It says a lot about how comfortable I am here in the United States.”
Victor Flores 