Darlings of the WBC, Team Czechia hopes for a miracle against juggernaut Japan – The Athletic
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TOKYO — The conversation about game strategy was over. Because ultimately, if the group of players and coaches assembled in this conference room was going to do the unthinkable, it wouldn’t come down to any of that.
Czechia pitching coach John Hussey gathered players in a circle last week, before their four-game World Baseball Classic schedule began. Around him was not a single big leaguer, minor leaguer, or anyone with a heater topping 90 miles per hour. Instead he looked upon a ragtag group with big dreams, real life jobs, and the representative embodiment of what makes this WBC endearing to the masses.
So forget strategy. Because how do you strategize a talent gap of this magnitude? To beat any of Team Czechia’s four opponents, it would have to be about guts and pride – Clichés, yes, but tangible enough, they hoped, to make a difference.
“‘Don’t walk away from this tournament regretting not being aggressive,” Hussey said. Not taking the opportunity by the balls. Alright? Guys, there is no pressure on us. It is the most advantageous time to play. Every bit of pressure is on the other team.
“‘I don’t like saying this but they’re expected to beat us,” he said, pointing to the various countries on their schedule. “They’re expected to beat us and they expect to beat us. F—ing attack, boys. You will not want to be looking back on this tournament in 10 years, regretting the fact that we didn’t f—ing show something, and take it by the nuts.”
In Tokyo, the team from the Czech Republic and their lovable, inspirational story found a cult following three years ago — winning a game over a very poor China team in the WBC — and earned the legitimate respect of their opponents and local fans. Since then, crowds for their games have been populated by Japanese locals donning their jerseys, painting their faces, and chanting the Czech team name before each pitch their team throws or sees.
Fans at the Tokyo Dome have found an underdog to cheer for in Team Czechia. (Sam Blum photo)
On Tuesday, pool play will end with Japan facing Czechia, as the latter looks to pull off the ultimate upset. On one side are the defending champions, the world’s greatest superstar, and a host of big league All-Stars. On the other side is a team whose players moonlight as night club bouncers, English teachers and groundskeepers. It’s not a fair fight, but a fun one. One that Czechia relishes.
“This is the reality. This is our lives,” said catcher Martin Červenka, whose 10 minor league seasons make him arguably his nation’s all-time most decorated baseball player. Now, he works as a salesman for a chemical company.
“We’re here to play baseball, and we qualified for a reason. The fact that we have regular jobs doesn’t change what we accomplished to get to this point,” he said.
The gregarious manager Pavel Chadim, who is a Neurologist in real life, has a host of patients to see on March 12, two days after his bout with Japan. He tries to keep perspective, he said, that losing is nothing shameful when looked at in the proper context.
But even when no one expects Czechia to win, there is pressure on his team, as he sees it. Humiliating and lopsided defeats could set back what he’s built. His small landlocked nation is farther ahead of the Eastern European counterparts in baseball. And small modicums of success, he knows, are the best way to grow the sport in a region he believes his country represents.
“If we have 15-0 (losses), the answer will be, ‘Oh what are they doing here? This s—. Send them home. Send them to the village’” Chadim said. “We are fighting. Not just for us, but for other international countries which want to be seen on the international stage. It’s not just our goal, our mission.”
Baseball in the Czech Republic is not a primary or secondary sport. There’s ice hockey and soccer, and then everything else. The game wasn’t played there until after the Velvet Revolution ended in 1989, ending communist rule in the nation. It’s still not widely popular; locals support the team, but aren’t watching every pitch with bated breath. There has never been a big leaguer native to Czech soil.
In the last WBC, big league veteran Eric Sogard played for the national team because his mother was born in Czechia. This time around, it’s free agent shortstop Terrin Vavra, a born-and-raised American who has played 68 games with the Baltimore Orioles, and is getting the chance because his great grandfather was Czechian.
Terrin and his father Joe, a former Minnesota Twins hitting coach, both spoke to the rest of the team ahead of the first game. Their resumes don’t stack up with the pedigree of the opposition, but in the WBC, experience is all relative, and often irrelevant. For this team, the Vavra family is baseball royalty.
“It’s a monumental task,” Joe Vavra said to the entrance team, “but I’m looking at a lot of pride. You should be proud of yourselves to be in this room.”
The first three games of this tournament, all losses, have not been good for the Czech team. They’ve had moments of unbridled joy, like Vavra’s three-run home run against Korea, or taking an early lead against Australia. But they are badly overmatched, losing the three games by a total of 25-5. Chadim hasn’t hid his disappointment after the losses. “I am a little bit emotional,” he admitted after a 5-1 loss to the Aussies.
Those results will now require Czechia to re-qualify for the next WBC, with a new group will try to reach this stage, and show they’re more than just a cute story worthy of pity applause.
Three years ago, electrician and pitcher Ondrej Satoria became a hero in Czech baseball circles when he struck out Shohei Ohtani. The host Samurai would go on to win the game 10-2, with relative ease. But at the time of his big K, Czechia held a 1-0 lead in the third inning.
That early lead and that K are at the root of this team’s popularity in this country. The Japanese respect their efforts to grow the game they love. They feel invested in that, and want to be a part of it. Their fandom isn’t purely polite.
Satoria, quiet and humble, would have a star turn in the game’s aftermath. He did tons of interviews, he said, and the narrative of a small-time electrician from a small-time nation was easy to support. He’s kept the ball framed in his home, along with dirt from the Tokyo Dome mound.
Satoria signed plenty of autographs for Japanese fans after striking out Ohtani at the 2023 WBC. (RICHARD A. BROOKS / AFP via Getty Images)
Three years later, he sat with his arms crossed in the team hotel, smiling as he reminisced on the moment that made him a star. Tuesday will be Satoria’s final game with the “Czesko” jersey on his chest. He’s decided to retire from the national team after this tournament.
“I’m proud that I can say I achieved everything that I wanted. I will finish my career here where I made myself famous,” Satoria said. The goal is to win a game, he added and keep momentum going for the next generation of Czech baseball players. Doing so, however, will require a win over their unbeatable hosts.
Can this team beat Japan? The question was asked of Chadim in a rapid fire manner, designed to elicit an instinctually honest reply. Chadim didn’t bite.
“Everybody can beat everybody,” he said sheepishly. He knew a cliché was the only politically correct response.
“I have prepared a story for our guys, before Japan. The story is something between true and false. But more true.”
Even if they’re going to win on intangibles, this team does gameplan and scout. Before the first game, Czechia’s third base coach made a point of going through the Korean starter’s arsenal, identifying which pitches and which locations to lay off. But there is no game plan that will work well enough to make this team the superior club. For Chadim, it’s far more important to instill a belief. Though a story that may or may not have actually happened.
It’s a story, he said, about an American mathematician, studying at an elite university. He arrived to his class late and hung over, and missed the purpose of extremely difficult homework given to him. Still, he brought it back to class having completed the homework.
“The teacher told him, ‘It was an example of a problem with no possible solution,’” Chadim said excitedly, reaching the concluding point of his tale. “The student didn’t know it’s not possible. He did it anyway.”
“I want to say to these guys,” Chadim said, as he harshly tapped the table in front of him. Over his shoulder was a paused video game his players had been engaged in, Ohtani’s pixilated image on the screen.
His players don’t appear in video games. Czechia will have supporters in this game, if not true believers. Chadim’s story acknowledges that there is no logical reason to believe in them; except maybe one.
He paused, then spelled out the inevitable moral of his story: “You don’t know what isn’t possible.”
