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For baseball fans, winter is indeed the darkest, coldest season. During the long stretch between the World Series and spring training, baseball fans have an itch that can’t always be scratched by other sports. But the winter offers time to brush up on the history of the sport—reading books, marathon viewings of Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary series, and even trips to a local art gallery to scope out some memorabilia.

In that sense, Italian Americans at Bat: From Sand Lots to the Major League, an information-rich exhibition of baseball memorabilia celebrating the contributions of Italians-Americans to the national pastime, is perfectly timed. It’s on exhibit Jan. 17 through May 19 at Arte Italia, 442 Flint St., at the corner of Flint Street and California Avenue.

Funded and operated by the E.L. Wiegand Foundation, Arte Italia is a cultural center celebrating Italy, particularly its visual art and food, as well as the ties among Italy, the American West and Northern Nevada. The organizations presents multiple art exhibitions annually, as well as bringing in acclaimed chefs from different regions of Italy to teach, demonstrate, prepare and serve traditional meals. For the next culinary event, on Feb. 3-5, Paolo Sari, executive chef at Monte-Carlo Beach Hotel, will present meals in honor of the “culinary traditions” of three baseball players: Joe DiMaggio, Tony Lazzeri and Frank Cosetti.

Arte Italia is based in a 1914 home designed by Frederic DeLongchamps. The building more recently housed a series of restaurants, notably Hardy House, Pyrenees and the Aero Club. The E. L. Wiegend Foundation took over the building in 2004, and, after extensive renovations, Arte Italia has operated out of the building since 2008. The ground floor contains the state-of-the-art kitchen and dining room. Upstairs are two art galleries which, befitting the Italian theme, are called the Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci galleries.

The walls of those galleries are currently lined with hundreds of archival photos, vintage baseball cards, autographed balls, detailed, informative text panels and uniforms, caps and mitts used by famous players. There’s a computer database with statistics and information about more than 450 Italian-American baseball players. There’s a framed copy of the June 22, 1970, issue of Sports Illustrated with Red Sox outfielder Tony Conigliaro on the cover sporting a nasty black eye.

On one wall there’s a timeline of the years 1845 to 2012 and covering important points in the histories of baseball and Italian immigration into the United States, and, most especially, the times in which those two histories intersect. For example, this entry for 1955: “Joe DiMaggio becomes the first Italian American to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.”

DiMaggio, along with his brothers, Dom and Vince, are among the stars of the exhibition. The infinitely quotable Yogi Berra is another star. But there are also places highlighting players and managers like Phil Rizzuto, Tony Lazeri, Tommy Lasorda, Joe Torre and Tony La Russa, and former baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti.

“For them, it was a way to integrate into the American way of life,” says Annie Turner, the Arte Italia program director.

The exhibition was originally curated by the Museo Italo Americano, the Italian American Museum of San Francisco, so the show has a heavy emphasis on Bay Area teams, but this provides a great ending for the exhibition, which is arranged chronologically: an autographed cap and jersey worn by San Francisco Giants left-hander Barry Zito, who pitched Game 1 of the 2012 World Series, a crucial part of the Giants’ sweeping victory.