Want to know what makes the World Baseball Classic so special? Of course, it’s great to see baseball players from across the globe sharing their cultures with the rest of the world. The fans are always fun, too.
But what’s really cool is the fact that most of the guys playing for the teams that we’re watching actually don’t play baseball professionally. In fact, most of them are just…regular folks.
The Czech Republic’s WBC team is the perfect example of this.
The team only has one single MLB player — Eric Sogard. The rest of them work regular day jobs just like you and me. ESPN has more.
“The rest of the team is made up of a small collection of minor leaguers, college players and members of the Czech Baseball Extraliga — talented amateur players who go to work just like the rest of us when they’re not qualifying for international tournaments.”
That’s why it was so thrilling to see Czech pitcher Ondrej Satoria striking out Shohei Ohtani here in this special moment.
Ondřej Satoria works as an electrician for his day job. Today he struck out Shohei Ohtani in a WBC game without ever throwing a pitch above 79 MPH
(h/t @BaseballBrit)
pic.twitter.com/VRFTZ8cX7k— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) March 11, 2023
To make it even better, it only took him 3 pitches to get it done. That’s one of the best hitters in baseball going out on strikes coming from a regular dude. Well, a regular dude who is pretty good at baseball. But still! A regular dude. He’s an electrician back home, man.
What an incredible moment. What an incredible story. Satoria is keeping that ball forever and he absolutely should. It truly doesn’t get any better than that.