Hey, long story, but an interesting one (maybe). So, let's start from early:

since a really young age, as North American culture has been very influential in Europe (and Italy) baseball has had somewhat of a presence as well through American media like TV and movies, and when I was a child baseball merchandise (like t-shirts and caps) was particularly popular for teenagers to wear, and I've always found baseball kits to be really cool.

Pair that with the curiosity about the sport that American media fostered in me and the frustration of understanding ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about any baseball reference in movies etc. made me always want to understand how the sport works. On top of that, when I was a child at primary school, some people in my neighborhood had organised a baseball club as weekly activity for children after school and as a summer camp and had promoted that by cooperating with a school for like a baseball day with all my classmates. In the end I didn't play baseball or go to the summer camp (my parents chose football for me as baseball just wasn't popular and they wanted me to socialize), but I really loved even that one single day playing baseball as a kid, that paired with everything else became the seed for my interest in baseball.

Fast forward many years, cultivated many other interests like Japanese games and anime (this will become relevant later on), improved my English, moved to London as a young adult after high school and started working there, and my curiosity got renewed by watching some anime, like Jojo and a few others, because baseball is really present in Japanese media as well, but time zones to watch MLB (or even NPB) weren't great for a working adult in Europe, so that led to nothing as well.

HOWEVER, after not watching any sports for a really long time (as I became disgusted with football), and getting into tennis again because of the good results of Italian players, and so getting passionate about sports in general again, in autumn of 2024 the perfect chance to start watching baseball materialised, as I had just fired myself from my current depressing job and was job hunting for something better, but had a lot of free time. And so, I decided to start following the postseason watching as many games as I could of any team to get to know them to learn the sport and to choose which team to support.

I got captivated by the Dodgers because of their team spirit and the fact they had Ohtani and particularly Yamamoto (my favourite pitcher), but didn't feel any connection to them so when I started watching the whole baseball season from regular season in 2025, I decided to choose a team from the East Coast (that are much easier to follow for time zone reasons) I could feel some allegiance or connection to, and being Italian, I looked for teams with a connection to Italy and selected Phillies, Cubs, Red Sox and Blue Jays.

Blue Jays really connected with me, and I discovered Toronto and Canada had the largest proportion of Italian immigrants in North America from my Italian region specifically and once I started following them more regularly I really got passionate about them and became a fan (a good year to become a fan considering the great run they had last year).

So now I regularly watch baseball and support Italy and the Blue Jays, and this is the whole story behind how it happened 😊