Jake Odorizzi of the Tampa Bay Rays

Jake Odorizzi is one of the hot shot sensations now playing for the Tampa Bay Rays and Kathleen was wondering if you all might be related.  So I checked up, not expecting to get very far.  But I was wrong and it's worth it to note that it did not really take me very long to locate the following information about Jake's family tree.

If you don't want to go barking up the wrong tree, I'll give you the quick version before I continue-----it does not appear that this Jake Odorizzi is in your direct Odorizzi line.  Too bad, because he's kind of a cutie.

Jake turned 24 about a month ago and is the only child of Mike and Juli Odorizzi.  Jake graduated from Highland High School in Highland Illinois, which is where I believe his parents still reside.  His father appears to be about my age, so I knew I wouldn't be able to find him in a census record yet in order to figure out who the Odorizzi parents were.

So I did some creative Googling and discovered that Jake's Odorizzi grandparents are Wayne and Janice of Canton Illinois.  Wayne was apparently born October 1935 so I was able to locate him with his parents Leo and Wilhemina in the 1940 census.  Wayne is just 4 years old at this time and his father Leo is listed as a coal miner in Macoupin County Illinois--a popular starting point in this country for  your Italian immigrants (including your grandfather Costante). 

Some further creative family tree searching on Ancestry.com led me to believe that Leo was probably Americanized from Olivo. One of the census records indicated that Leo had immigrated in 1905 so I searched the Ellis Island records and found Olivo coming to the United States with his mother Caterina aboard the SS Philadelphia in June 1905 before he'd even turned 2 years old.  Caterina indicated she had come to join her husband Davide.  I found Davide in the Ellis Island records entering the country just a year yearlier to join his brother in law Giuseppe Eccher in Colorado.  Caterina and Davide indicated their last residence was Tuenno, in the Trentino area.

Using the Nati in Trentino records online, I found that Costante Davide (I almost didn't find him because I was looking for Davide and not Costante) born to Paolo and Maria February 17 1874.  Paolo is Jake's great great great grandfather. 

So far, I haven't found Paolo in your Odorizzi line but the search was fun, even if a little scary because this only took about an hour and a half to accomplish.  It would have been nice to claim a professional baseball player in your family tree and you might still yet!  On my "Yankee" side of the family, we can claim a Hall of Famer which is kind of cool.  This search gave me some time to give attention to the Odorizzi line and who knows where that will take me?