"The time has come to finally say enough with playing baseball and spend more time with my family," said the first athlete born and raised in Italy to play in the Major League. Added FIBS president Marco Mazzieri, "I want to thank Liddi for his role as the standard-bearer of our movement, which he has been able to play on and off the field at the highest level for over 20 years."

It’s the end of an era for Italian baseball: the three games played this weekend by Alex Liddi in Dubai for the UAE Series were the last of his incredible career. The player born in 1988, who was the first athlete born and raised in Italy to play in the Major League in 2011 with the Seattle Mariners and to win the Caribbean Series in 2016 with the Venados de Mazatlán, has announced that he has definitively hung up his glove.