Baseball around the world is being developed by Major League Baseball International, The International Baseball Federation (governing body of baseball around the world) and other organizations like International Sports Group and Caliendo Sports International (CSI) who help develop coaches in the sport. As part of our series on the intenational game, we asked the president of CSI to provide an over all perspective.

by Pete Caliendo
President, Caliendo Sports International
President, Pitch And Hit Club
Technical Commissioner, International Baseball Federation
Technical Commissioner COPABE

Since the growth of baseball worldwide the sport has grown in numbers but also has developed to a level in which 29% of players in Major League baseball are foreign born. This is not only because baseball is intrigued with international players, or its marketing ability has dazzled the fans, but more importantly because other countries have raised participation and their standards of coaching and training.

Yes, we have the Latin countries that play the game all day, 365 days a year and have great athletes in their countries. Yes, we have MLB with facilities in many of the Latin countries developing players; this has helped tremendously in growing the numbers of international players. But now we are seeing an expansion of players being developed in Europe.


Major League Baseball has worked hard by marketing the game in Europe through their Envoy Coaches program, where they send experienced coaches during the summer time all over Europe to work with different clubs. They have established several academies to train players the correct way so they have a better chance to progress up the later. Their main facility in Tirrenia, Italy, in conjunction with the Italian Baseball Federation is host to over 40 players from around all of Europe who are selected at tryouts held by MLB scouts. The players stay the whole month of August and receive training from some of the top professional baseball instructors of MLB. They have even sent Detroit Tiger outfielder Curtis Granderson to tour Europe and promote the game. There are more things they are doing to expand the game in Europe.


Several countries have taken upon themselves to try and develop the sport by educating their coaches and promoting the game in their schools. Countries like Canada and Australia have a mandatory coaches training program at the younger levels, the grass roots level. Not even the USA has a national mandatory coaches training program for volunteer coaches, I ask why not? (A topic for another article?)

Other countries recognize the importance of training their coaches because it will result in more players playing the game and getting developed better. The Dutch and Italians for years have established some very good coaches training programs and just recently in the Olympic Qualifier in Taiwan the Dutch beat Cuba and the Italians Beat the USA. These are major accomplishments for these countries in European baseball development. The USA in contrast to other countries has a great number of players playing the game, estimates show over 25 million amateur players in a country of 330 million, whereas Cuba has 4 million players in a country of 11 million plus people.  [Editor's note: Other estimates put the US player count at 9 million for baseball, all ages, the rest are presumed to be casual softball players. But still, the point is made.]


If you watched the World Baseball classic it was not a fluke that Japan won it and Cuba came in Second. Japan has some tremendous talent compared around the world and some of the best disciplined players. There flexibility, strength and mechanics are second to none. Not to mention that they will out train you, out hustle you and play all the innings at 100 percent. The Cubans are outstanding athletes that have a very good training program in their country not to mention a great league. You cannot just play in the World Baseball Classic after playing mostly amateurs for the last 25 years in international competition and beat several big league line ups unless your league is comparable to the level of MLB.

The World Baseball Classic was a great example of countries catching up to the USA in the development of baseball players. [See commentary on the WBC games in an article by WebBall's Richard Todd.]


Under the Direction of Paul Seiler CEO of USA Baseball, Eric Campbell Director of the USA Senior team and Bob Watson GM of the Senior team, the last two years they have accomplished some great things in international baseball by beating Cuba in the Olympic qualifier in Havana and again beating Cuba in the World cup in Taiwan, first time in over 30 years. They have done an outstanding job in assembling some very good teams for international competition.

More importantly for governing bodies of baseball worldwide, in order to grow the sport in your country your focus must be in recruiting more coaches, training them properly and getting them to go out and promote the game. [Editor's note: All such initiatives require the active involvement of coaches from the USA.]

Among the countries where Pete has coached and done coaches training... Brazil, Mexico, Belgium, Italy, Holland, Slovakia, Slovenia, France, Argentina, Japan, Australia, Taiwan, Canada and the USA.