European league finds itself a border-crossing baseball hit

PRAGUE -- Radek Prochazka began playing baseball by accident. As a teenager he played water polo, but when the swimming pool in his hometown of Brno closed 10 years ago, he decided to give America's national pastime a try.

With his sidearm delivery, he ended up pitching for the Brno Dragons, the dominant amateur team in the Czech league, playing before sparse crowds of hundreds of fans -- and loving every minute of it.

On Thursday, Prochazka, 27, was on the mound before 2,000 enthusiastic fans at Prague's Green Roller Park as the starting pitcher for the Czech national team as it faced the perennial powerhouse, the Netherlands, in the European Baseball Championship tournament. Prochazka is a baseball pioneer, part of a relatively small community of enthusiasts in Europe. At this point, leagues are either amateur or semi-pro, and players and coaches hold down day jobs and play ball on weekends.

Although public interest in baseball is small compared with soccer and hockey, there are signs that it is on the rise in Europe -- and Major League Baseball is helping in the push.

''Everybody who is playing at this level really loves baseball," said Prochazka, who is studying for a graduate degree in physical education.

''It is pretty difficult for us," Prochazka said of European baseball players after a rough night on the mound in which he gave up three runs over three innings in a 3-0 loss to the Dutch, the defending European champions. ''We all have to work. It's a hobby, but we spend almost as much time on the field as professionals."

Baseball, nevertheless, has come a long way in Europe since Prochazka began playing. According to Major League Baseball officials, Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany have long boasted semi-pro leagues, and interest is spreading rapidly in former communist nations such as the Czech Republic.

A little over a decade ago, Green Roller Park was nothing more than a makeshift sandlot built on a swamp near an old garbage dump. The park, which will host today's European Championship final between the Netherlands and Italy, is now a slick facility with lights, freshly cut grass, a regulation diamond, concessions, and souvenir stands, announcers, and a grounds crew. It resembles a Single A minor-league ballpark in the United States.

For fans, games now feature many of the staples of the American baseball experience, including ''the wave," the seventh-inning stretch, hot dogs, and, of course, beer.

A group of Dutch fans, who drove 14 hours from Rotterdam to see their national team defend its European title, sang along to ''Take Me Out to the Ballgame," which was being piped through the stadium's public address system during a break in the action. After the game, fans hung out and chatted with players on the field or over draft beers at the stadium's small outdoor bar.

''People who like baseball in Europe are like a big family," said Hans van Nieuwenhuizen, 52, an insurance adjuster from Rotterdam who also announces games as a hobby. ''Everybody -- the players, the fans -- knows everybody."

What motivates one to be so dedicated to a minority sport that draws crowds in the hundreds for regular season games, and just a few thousand in the playoffs?

''It is a major sport for us," said Ron Wicklert, 46, a freelance photographer also from Rotterdam. He said he attends about three games a week and follows Major League Baseball on television.

The championship tournament is run by the European Baseball confederation. But Major League Baseball, which is trying to raise the game's international profile, has been active in Europe since the early 1990s sponsoring clinics for coaches and umpires and cutting deals with European television stations for broadcast rights in some countries.

Clive Russell, Major League Baseball International's director for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, said that MLB is hoping to hold a regular season game somewhere in Europe within the next couple of years -- and that the Red Sox has expressed interest in playing.

Plans are also being explored to support one or more professional leagues in Europe that could act as farm clubs for major-league teams in the United States.

Fans buying tickets for the European Championships are given brochures, sponsored by Major League Baseball, explaining the game's rules to the uninitiated. An effort called the MLB Roadshow is setting up inflatable batting cages in downtown Prague to spread awareness of the sport. Czech Television, which is broadcasting three games, including today's final, is also participating in the educational effort by clarifying the game's intricacies and subtleties to viewers.

''We are at a stage in the sport where we are drawing committed fans," Russell said in an interview at the Prague park. ''I think with the right support and the right approach . . . you could have a successful league in every country. But I think the only way it would be successful is if it were done in cooperation" with Major League Baseball.

Such a development for European baseball fans may seem a long way off. Many worry that the loss of baseball as an Olympic sport in 2012 could harm the game by depriving it of attention and government revenues in places like Europe.

But Czech baseball officials such as Jakub Vancura, manager of the 2005 European Baseball Championships, hope that for future generations, baseball will nevertheless become an ordinary part of the sports landscape -- thanks to their pioneering work.

''Baseball is still a minority sport here because right now just a minority is smart enough to understand that baseball is the greatest sport in the world," Vancura said.