Jim Small, Senior Vice President of International at Major League Baseball, is the 2022 Italian American Baseball Foundation Executive of the Year.
He will be honored at the IABF Gala on December 1 in Brooklyn. Tickets and sponsorship opportunities are available now.
Small, who has deep Italian roots and whose family changed their last name from Piccolo at Ellis Island, is responsible for growing MLB’s brand and development globally, planning MLB’s international play schedule, generating new opportunities to grow the sport’s popularity internationally, creating and nurturing a talent pipeline in key markets, and overseeing the World Baseball Classic. Small leads the league’s four international offices and coordinates their efforts with MLB’s global media, sponsorship and consumer products departments.
“I’m really proud of my Italian heritage,” said Small. “My grandfather came from Reggio Calabria by himself when he was 14. He didn’t speak a lick of English and thus couldn’t really protest when the immigration official at Ellis Island anglicized his name from Giovanni Piccolo to John Small. Like so many others that came to America at the time, he learned English, built a career (working on the railroad) and helped create the foundation of this country in the 20’s and 30’s. When I started working in international baseball more than 30 years ago, one of my first trips was to Italy, where I saw firsthand what the game meant to the people there. In Grosetto and Rimini and Nettuno and Parma people love the game for the exact same reasons as people in Boston and San Francisco and St Louis and Brooklyn. The game binds us as closely as our culture and heritage.”
Prior to his current role, Small spent 16 years running MLB’s Asia Pacific business based in Tokyo. Over that time, MLB saw a 400 percent increase in the value of its media rights in Japan; played regular season and exhibition baseball games in Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Beijing, Taipei, Taichung, Kaohsiung, Seoul and Sydney; and established a business in China that boasts more than 30 million unique program participants, the regular broadcasting of MLB games across terrestrial, satellite and digital platforms that reaches 900 million viewers and the development of Chinese professional baseball players.
A veteran of more than 35 years in the sports marketing industry, Small started his career in public relations positions with the Kansas City Royals, the Chicago Cubs, the Texas Rangers and MLB’s New York Office. From 1995-1998, he held a variety of global marketing positions at Nike, Inc., primarily focused on the company’s soccer brand. Small has served as an adviser to the Japanese Government’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in its preparation for the 2020 Olympic Games, and on the board of the General Sports Authority of Saudi Arabia. Small holds a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Kansas and an M.B.A. in Finance from Fordham University in New York.
