Doug Strasnick

This is the beauty of the WBC: A 29-year-old bearded electrician from Ostrava, Czechia who has played baseball his whole life in a country where very few play the sport helps Czechia qualify for its first-ever WBC, strikes out Shohei Ohtani on a pitch he says came out of his hand wrong, and becomes one of the faces of the Classic. Ondřej Satoria, who is retiring from the national team after this tournament, will leave Japan where he gets stopped for autographs and photos and receives standing ovations, and fly back to Ostrava where he’s a normal guy with a simple life. And while no one back home is stopping him in the streets for autographs, imagine the stories he’ll have for his 2-year-old son when he grows up. “The most important thing is that the baseball community from around the world now knows that Czechia plays baseball.” - @OndrejSatoria in @michaelsclair’s book “We Sacrifice Everything to Baseball” 🇨🇿