The Summer I Played Professional Baseball in the Czech Republic

Written from Brno in the summer of 2012, in the middle of my sixth professional season, and lightly edited since.

Most people don't know you can play baseball across Europe if you know the right people.

Over my career I'd played with guys who'd played all over the world. One of them connected me, and in 2012 I left the Atlantic League mid-season and went to the Czech Republic.

That decision confused a lot of people. It's the one I'd defend hardest.

What European baseball actually looked like

There were eight teams in the entire country.

We played one doubleheader on the weekend and practiced twice a week. That's the job. Nobody there is trying to become a professional baseball player — the local guys don't get paid; only the imports do. They love the game and they want to be the best team in the country, and it's played more for pride than for a career.

The competition wasn't close to the American level, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. Most of those guys couldn't have made an independent club in the States. That isn't a knock on them — they play a fraction as often, so they improve a fraction as fast. Frequency is most of development.

I say it plainly because a young player reading this should know what these opportunities are and aren't.

The part I struggled with

I'm someone who tries to get better every single day, and the Czech schedule made that genuinely hard.

Minimal obligation. Practice twice a week, play once a weekend, and the rest of your time is your own. I tried to get out four or five days a week anyway, but I'd be lying if I said my edge didn't dull that summer. It did. My work ethic slipped and I made some decisions I wouldn't have made at home.

I gave myself some leeway on that, and I still would. When you're somewhere genuinely new, you have to disconnect from your normal for a while to get anything out of it. But it was real, and it's the honest cost of the trip.

What pulled me back was yoga. I found a hot yoga studio in Brno, a short tram ride from my flat, and every time I've had a consistent practice, everything else in my life has fallen into line. That's been true for twenty years.

Why I actually went

Here's the real reason, and it's the reason I still think about that summer.

I didn't go because I'd given up on the major leagues. I went because I wanted to make one decision for me, rather than making every single decision in service of a dream.

You want it so badly that you become a slave to it. That's a real thing and it happens to good players. Every meal, every off-season, every relationship, every choice measured against whether it moves you closer to the show. And the cruel part is that the wanting doesn't actually make it more likely.

So for one summer I chose differently, and I decided baseball could also be a currency — a way to see the world I'd never otherwise have seen.

That summer didn't get me to the big leagues. It also isn't the thing I regret.

What I'd tell a young player

The big leagues can be your pinnacle without being your only measure. I kept pitching for years after that summer, won another championship, and I'm still on a mound at 41.

There is more in this game for you than one destination. If the only version of a successful career is the one that ends in the major leagues, then almost every professional baseball player who has ever lived has failed — and that's obviously nonsense.

Use the game. Let it take you places.