Among the over 100 or so media credentials issued for the two-game Global Baseball Match 2015 between Samurai Japan and Team Europe on Tuesday and Wednesday were two for Jakub Starik and David Agner, a pair of journalists from the Czech Republic. Baseball is pretty far down the pecking order in the Central European nation where hockey is king — Jaromir Jagr and Dominik Hasek are just two in a long line of NHL greats with Czech lineage — and whose borders consist of other hockey and soccer-mad nations Austria, Germany, Poland and Slovakia.
Even so Starik and Agner traveled all the way from Prague for Czech TV, the nation's public broadcaster, to document the European baseball team made up of athletes from six nations, including Czech infielder Jakub Sladek. Armed with a microphone, a video camera, and with Agner sporting a Brooklyn Dodgers hat he bought from a shop in Prague, the pair was bringing attention to the sport vying for exposure in an area already deeply invested in a number of other sports, such as volleyball, basketball and handball.
"People who have seen the footage we have done here are like 'wow, this is happening, and there is a Czech guy there, you can get that far in baseball? You can do baseball on semi-professional or amateur level in Czech Republic and you can play in a stadium that fits 40,000 people,' Starik told The Japan Times at Tokyo Dome on Wednesday. "And there are 100 journalists here. People now in Czech Republic, are watching not only Jakub play, but they see that something about baseball is happening, which is important."