PHOENIX — La dolce vita, indeed. Mike Piazza and Team Italy are living the sweet life in the WBC. Perhaps the former slugger should be the Mets’ hitting coach someday, because his team can really hit, too.
Piazza is Italy’s hitting coach and Friday Team Italy blasted Canada 14-4 at Chase Field to move to 2-0 in the tournament. It was such a beating the mercy rule had to be used. The win virtually assures the Italians a trip to South Beach.
The goal is to get to North Beach and San Francisco for the Final Four.
“We’re here to get to San Francisco,’’ shortstop Anthony Granato said. “People are starting to open their eyes about us, how can they not?’’
Piazza told The Post in mid-November that Team Italy was no pushover after having won two European Championships. The Italians came here with a point to prove.
“I’ll take none of the credit and none of the blame, that was my motto when I was catching,’’ Piazza said with a smile. “I love this tournament and we picked good guys, and they’ve really meshed with the Italian guys.’’
Piazza said he has been getting a lot of congratulatory texts.
“My favorites are the ones in Italian,’’ he said. “This is great for the tournament. We want to continue to grow baseball in Italy.’’
The Italians celebrated two walkoffs in the eighth inning, the first when Mike Costanzo hit what was thought to be a grand slam that was ruled a ground-rule double after the umpires looked at the replay. The second walkoff was a single by Mario Chiarini that scored Chris Colabello to give Italy a 10-run advantage and the mercy rule win. Colabello hit a three-run home run in the third. Italy plays Team USA Saturday night.
“I just did a lot of cheering,’’ Piazza told reporters in the dugout after the game. “It’s impressive what we did offensively. Something like this is great. We feel baseball is marketable in Italy. Our guys are not intimidated.This has been a passion, a labor of love for me. Our guys our honored to be here and I just try to keep it simple. We just want to keep it going.’’ As for coaching in the majors someday Piazza said, “I never say never.’’
In San Juan, Puerto Rico, former Met Carlos Beltran had a key RBI double in Puerto Rico’s 3-0 tourney-opening victory over Spain.