Italian American and longtime Italian baseball player and coach Salvatore Varriale has been selected as the 2023 Italian American Baseball Foundation Ambassador Award honoree.

Tickets are officially on sale for the November 30 event, which will take place at Marina Del Ray in the Bronx.

Varriale played for several decades in Parma. He hit .321/.408/.537 with 355 RBI in 370 games in Italy. He hit 72 homers in 1,338 at-bats and appeared in 59 games for the Italian national team.

Varriale became a coach and manager after retiring as a player. From 1988-2008, he coached for Parma, a period in which they won 10 league titles, 15 European championships, 4 Italian Cups, 1 CEB Cup, 1 Super Cup, and 3 Mediterranean Cup. Varriale also coached for the national team several times, most notably at the Olympics in 1992 (Barcelona), 1996 (Atlanta), 2000 (Sydney) and 2004 (Athens).

In 2009, Parma retired Varriale’s number 27. As of 2012, he was the Italian scout for the Cincinnati Reds. In 2017, he was named a Knight of the Republic, Italy’s highest-ranking honor. He was inducted into the Italian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2019.

IABF debuted the Ambassador Award in 2022 and presented it to Marco Landi, the head of communication and marketing of the Federation of Italian Baseball and Softball.

Tickets, tables, and sponsorships are officially available now! More IABF honorees will be announced in the coming weeks.