Michael Clare

For getting the book over the line, I have to thank Mike Duncan, the podcaster and author, author of Hero of Two Worlds about Lafayette.

He was the one who was really, really pushing me to do that, actually was talking to the University of Nebraska Press about the book, and they were interested, and he gave me a call.

He was like, come on down, you need to talk to them right now.

So, really...

to thank Mike for that.

Sometimes there's people in your life who believe in something more than you do at first, which is great.

But really, the thing is with this story, the Czechs developed a program unlike any others across Europe.

Obviously, you have the Netherlands that have their connection to Curaçao and the Dutch Antilles.

But Germany and Italy, their baseball programs originally came out of largely World War II and US military bases.

And obviously, the Czechs were USSR.

Baseball was allowed because Cuba played it, but it was certainly not encouraged.

They were smuggling equipment into the country at that time.

So the very start of baseball in the Czech Republic is completely different.

And then you look at the World Baseball Classic.

And 99% of the players on this team are born in the Czech Republic.

They grew up in the Czech Republic.

They played baseball in the Czech Republic and they live and they work and they have jobs in the Czech Republic.

So it's a story about how you build a program where there's not much money and few people care about what you're doing.

And, you know, it's sort of like the cool runnings or Leicester city.

It's, it's, it's an underdog story.