Passion ignites success, and Mike Piazza is realizing a different kind of baseball dream these days.
He is rediscovering ancestral roots in Italy and helping to make baseball relevant there. Piazza is the hitting coach for the Italian National Team that won the European Championship this year. He will serve as hitting coach for Team Italy in the 2013 World Baseball Classic.
Piazza is becoming quite fluent in Italian, as he learns more about himself as a coach and a person.
“This has become a passion for me,’’ Piazza told The Post from his home in Miami Beach. “I just got back from Italy, and I am doing a lot of research on my family roots from Sicily. During your baseball career you really can’t focus on things like that because you are concentrating on playing. I’m trying to help grow the game in Italy.
“This is a great escape for me and at the same time a way to stay connected to the game I love,’’ he said. As for speaking Italian, Piazza noted, “I enjoy the challenge of it, and I’ve been told I have a pretty good accent.’’
Piazza, 44, is married to Alicia Rickter, and they have two daughters, Nicoletta Veronica, 5, and Paulina Sophia, 3. The family will soon be traveling to Sicily for a month.
Piazza’s coaching style has proven to be a big hit, which is not surprising considering his success in the majors.
“When I was coming up with the Dodgers I learned from Reggie Smith, and he was a direct disciple of Ted Williams,’’ said Piazza, who hit 427 home runs and batted .308 over his 16-year career as a catcher, eight of which were with the Mets.
“I really benefitted a lot from good coaching, so I feel I can impart my knowledge, and that is my way of giving back to the game. And you can tell, obviously with our success and winning two European Championships since I’ve been there, it works,’’ Piazza said. “The players really listen, and it’s fun for me. I get a lot of joy from doing that. I’m not a huge ‘change a guy’ type of coach, I keep it simple. I’m not very autocratic. I don’t try to pound my system into guys. To me, hitting is personal.’’
This is a big year for Piazza, as the 12-time All-Star is eligible for the Hall of Fame for the first time. Only five Hall of Famers have hit more home runs while hitting for a higher average than Piazza: Stan Musial, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Jimmie Foxx and Babe Ruth.
That is quite a list.
“It’s always exciting to think about it,’’ Piazza said of Cooperstown. “But it’s like anything, you just hope and see what happens, that’s all you can do. Through the years I’ve been fortunate to meet with Golden Age players like Ted Williams, and it’s great. I was fortunate to be in that era of between old school and new school, and I met so many great players coming up with the Dodgers like Don Drysdale, Sandy Koufax, Roy Campanella. It was like baseball heaven for a minor leaguer, and that was one of the main things that helped me. It inspired me and helped me develop.’’
Piazza, 44, would like to return to the majors someday in some capacity and continues to keep the lines of communication open with the Mets and Jeff Wilpon. He feels for the Mets and their fans.
“The Mets have gone through a lot of transition the last couple years,’’ Piazza said.
What’s right for him now is making Italy the best it can be in baseball.
He played with Italy in the 2006 WBC, and that opened these new doors.
“I never really identified myself as being Italian,’’ Piazza said. “When I threw some feelers out there, the overwhelming response was ‘yes.’ I started a relationship with the Italian Baseball Federation and its president Ricardo Fraccari.
“When I retired [after the 2007 season] I really wasn’t ready to get back into the game on a regular basis. I wanted to kind of detach from the game, but you still love the game, and I could take it as it goes, and obviously trips to Italy aren’t a bad thing. I kind of fell in love with it, and I have great friends over there now.”
Baseball is carving a niche.
“Alex Liddi, who played for the Mariners, is the first big leaguer to be born in Italy in a long time, since the ’50s,’’ said Piazza, who also noted pitcher Alessandro Maestri, who was in the Cubs organization, is having success in Japan.
He said there is young talent on the way as well, noting teams have revved up their scouting in Italy.
“There are some pretty good ballplayers, but it’s different there because they don’t have any sports in their schools,’’ Piazza said. “They have to go to an academy system, kind of like the Dominican Republic. But there is one academy for the size of Italy and there are like 26 academies in the Dominican Republic.’’
To that end, Piazza is spearheading a venture to get more investment into Italian baseball.
“Italy can produce players, I’m convinced of that,’’ Piazza said. “This year we won our first European Championship on Dutch soil since 1978.
“They had a great team,’’ Piazza said of the Netherlands. “They were defending world champions. They beat Cuba, 2-1, in Panama. So there is some success. This is fun for me, but with that being said, the money doesn’t exactly flow to the program. They have to rely on their Olympic committee, and with baseball not being in the Olympics, is a tough political situation to get funding for the program.
“Now that I have kind of rolled my sleeves up and been in the trenches over there, it’s something I want to continue and hopefully get a full-time academy down south where the weather is better, and just grow the game with MLB investing more money.’’
Piazza said young Europeans that play are “fanatics’’ about the game.
“They just don’t have the facilities to play,” he said. “The incentive is there. It’s promising.’’
Italy is in a difficult WBC bracket
— it includes Team USA, which is gearing up like never before with Joe Torre the manager and recruiting young, hungry players. For the first time, Team USA will not be a squad filled with stars on the downside of their careers.
“There is a lot of cloak and dagger out there,’’ Piazza said with a laugh. “I’m really looking forward to the Classic. It’s such a great tournament.’’
At this stage of his life, Piazza said, the timing is not right to get back into the major league game, but that day could be coming.
“I just don’t know what the future holds,’’ he said. “I know I really enjoy doing this, and maybe in the future I would love to get back to it full time. The thing I love about this is I remember when I was in the minor leagues. I remember when I was in Mexico making $1,100 a month. It was fun. To me, it’s not where you are, it’s who you are with. As long as I’m with good guys and having fun, the camaraderie part, that’s important, and I would be willing to roll up my sleeves one day and coach full-time.
“I think there is so much pressure on these hitting coaches,’’ he said of the major leagues. “If the players aren’t hitting, it’s not the hitting coach’s fault. It’s just amazing the game today. There is so much information and almost too much information, and there is paralysis from analysis.’’
Piazza played for Bruce Bochy and said he understands how the Giants have won two of the past three World Series.
“He’s a great manager, and he’s fun to play for,’’ Piazza said.
He related this story about one late night with his manager, during their year together in San Diego in 2006, and how Bochy coaxed him into staying out a little longer than he wanted while on a trip to Washington.
Bochy promised Piazza he would not start the next day. Then the manager added, “But I’m going to need you to come off the bench for me and go deep.’’
“The next day I get there late,’’ Piazza said. “I got off the bench for him.’’
Piazza went deep, too. He hit a pinch-hit home run in the ninth inning off Chad Cordero to beat the Nationals, 10-9, home run No. 409 of his magnificent career.
“It was so funny, after the game, we were just giggling, but Bochy is that kind of guy,’’ Piazza said admiringly. “I’d run through a wall for him.’’
The game was so much fun for Piazza, and now he is bringing that same joy and passion to the country of his ancestors and loving every minute of la dolce vita in Italy.
kevin.kernan@nypost.com