Italy brought espresso to the dugout. Is it providing more than a caffeine buzz? – The Athletic

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Late on Wednesday night in Houston, Vinnie Pasquantino, the first baseman and captain of Team Italy, was, in his words, “beaned up.”

He had just hit three home runs in a 9-1 victory over Mexico in the World Baseball Classic, which meant he had consumed three celebratory shots of premium Italian espresso, brewed on demand in a corner of the dugout.

For Team Italy, the dugout espresso machine had morphed from novelty item to talisman, an appliance that has provided cultural symbolism for a roster of mostly Italian-Americans. It has helped fuel a 4-0 record in pool play entering a quarterfinal matchup with Puerto Rico on Saturday.

For Pasquantino, it left him buzzing.

“I’m caffeinated,” he told Fox’s Jon Morosi during a postgame interview.

Vinnie Pasquantino: “I’m caffeinated. I’m beaned up right now”
byu/Knightbear49 inbaseball

Team Italy is not the first baseball team to lean on caffeinated beverages. Every MLB clubhouse is stocked with energy drinks and drip coffee. The season is, ahem, a grind.

The custom, however, may be more than just a nod to Italy, where manager Francisco Cervelli says people “drink coffee about 20 times a day.” It raises the question: Are there any benefits to drinking espresso during a game? The answer is, well, complicated.

“Coffee is this incredibly interesting thing,” said Lonnie Lowery, a food industry consultant and former university professor who has researched coffee’s relationship to performance. “It’s such a complex matrix of things floating around in that cup.”

Most of the benefit comes from caffeine, which blocks adenosine receptors in the brain and increases dopamine production, boosting mood and focus. In studies, caffeine has been shown to enhance reaction time and performance in activities such as weight lifting and improve performance in running or cycling, which means the right dosage might help a batter hit a 95-mph fastball.

But while any type of caffeine could offer similar benefits, Lowery said, coffee has other compounds, such as chlorogenic acids and trigonelline, which may improve cognition and enhance muscle health.

For athletes to see a clear performance benefit, however, research suggests that they need to consume a lot — anywhere from three to six milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight, usually about an hour before performance. (Lowery argues that the benefit probably starts on the lower end of the recommendation.)

In other words, for a first baseman such as Pasquantino, who is listed at 245 pounds, he would need to consume about five shots of espresso about an hour before performance.

But one problem with coffee is that it’s actually an incredibly inconsistent and unpredictable source of caffeine, often dependent on the grind, the roast level, the type of beans and the brew method. Every batch of coffee can be different, and individual tolerance varies wildly.

“Caffeine is very much personalized,” said Nancy Clark, a registered dietitian and sports nutritionist. “One teaspoon of coffee and I’m wired for the day, and my husband drinks a whole mug of coffee before he goes to bed and sleeps like a baby.”

Another problem: Too much coffee can affect sleep, which can hurt recovery. It can also hinder performance. Years ago, Lowery had a student who conducted an unpublished study on the effects of 300 milligrams of caffeine — about five shots of espresso — on pitching velocity.

Using decaffeinated coffee as a control, the student found that subjects threw harder while caffeinated but their accuracy suffered.

“You can overdose,” Lowery said. “People get jitters; they can get anxiety.”

That hasn’t stopped baseball players from pounding coffee and energy drinks. The Athletic’s Matt Gelb revealed last year that Philadelphia Phillies reliever José Alvarado drank six shots of espresso per day (and then turned to drip coffee). Reliever Tommy Kahnle has relied on two or three cups of coffee, plus three or four energy drinks. And years ago, former major-league reliever Peter Moylan brought his own Breville espresso machine to Kansas City, transforming from a veteran reliever to the Royals’ clubhouse barista.

Moylan once owned his own coffee shop in his hometown of Melbourne, Australia, which colored his view on the importance of “good coffee.” He always took a fresh cup of coffee to the bullpen in the early innings. And when teammate Alex Gordon sampled his espresso and had a good night at the plate, the espresso trend caught fire. Moylan started serving up 10 to 15 specialty coffees per day.

“It’s got caffeine in it, so it’s obviously going to light you up a little bit,” Moylan said. “But it’s perfect for baseball. We are so restricted in what we can and can’t take. You’ve got to find an edge anywhere you can, and I guess coffee might be it.”

“If you have some success with that, then you’re very reluctant to change it,” Moylan added. “A lot of it can be habit. A lot of it can be, ‘I don’t want to f— up my routine.’ ”

The latter may be why some members of Team Italy appear to be taking phantom espresso shots during their celebrations, pretending to drink from empty cups. Caffeine may have performance benefits, but it’s not for everyone.

There’s also the matter of taste. In Italy, coffee is a way of life. It can bond friends, bring communities together and fuel a national baseball team. And yet, no cup is exactly the same.

In that way, Lowery says, it’s a lot like another Italian staple.

“Coffee is not just one thing,” he said. “It’s like wine. Imagine telling a wine connoisseur that, ‘Oh, wine’s just wine. They’d smack you. And coffee is the same way.”