It’s always amusing when it’s a little old lady who’s a baseball fan -- Ken gets a real kick out of that. His grandmother, Quinella, was a Chicago Cubs fan until she died of old age at 101.

Rosie Apicella, 82, met Ken at the bocce courts in Little Italy, Baltimore, during my Tuesday night bocce league. Ken had tagged along to watch our team of Molino cousins -- team “CUGINI” (translates to cousins in Italian) -- but he never had the chance to watch because Rosie found him.

And when Rosie found him, she talked baseball. A lot of baseball. Mostly Yankees – Rosie is a colossal Yankees fan. And in a town that has its own baseball team, especially Baltimore fans true to their O’s, that’s sometimes surprising. 

She knew it was Derek Jeter’s birthday the other day and that he was 37. She likes Robinson Cano. She knew Nick Swisher was starting to get hot. (As Ken continued to report the current score vs. Milwaukee from his iPhone for Rosie, Swisher had hit a home run.)

“She knew more about the Yankees than I did!” Ken joked.

During Rosie’s storytelling, she relayed one memory of a trip to New York to the old Yankee Stadium with her husband to see Joe DiMaggio play. “The Yankees lost,” she said.

“When Joe played,” Ken said, “there were no Orioles, so she had to root for someone. I don't blame her. He was a great player. Everybody liked him. Joe was the most popular baseball player and as you would expect, he had a huge Italian following.”

Once she cooked dinner for Orioles Jeremy Guthrie when he used to live in Little Italy. She met him as he pedaled past her house on a bike and they got to talking. “I was the only one who recognized him,” she said. “He called me Rosinda.”

Ken enjoyed his chat with Rosie. “She’s a very enthusiastic and tremendous baseball fan,” he said, “A very nice lady.”

She’s also one of the better bocce players in Little Italy. She knows all about that sport, too – one she has been playing for most of her life. In the old days the Italian men wouldn’t let girls play, but later Rosie helped to form the first all-female bocce team in Little Italy.

The dark clouds rolled in faster than we could roll bocce balls that night and it began to rain. Rosie flashed a crooked smile Ken’s way as she dashed off to her row house a few blocks over.

“I'm gonna go finish watching the Yankee game,” she said.