by David Burns | Sep 20, 2024 | Stories
The BBJO staff loves our jobs because we know that we’ve made a huge impact on the global development of this game, and have helped countless people experience the absolutely unforgettable all around the world. As we’re still looking for partners and sponsors to join...
by David Burns | Sep 2, 2024 | Stories
Cover photo credit: Lenka Brožová By David Burns July 21st, 2024 When I got the message from the organizers of Prague Baseball Week that our Globetrotters were not invited back to the tournament for 2024, I was not happy, to say the least. However, when hearing their...
by David Burns | Aug 2, 2024 | Stories
We catch up with Martin Mužík at Prague Baseball Week 2024 a little more than a year after his team impressed at the World Baseball Classic with a historic win over China highlighted by a 9th-inning 3-run home run by Mužík. Photo Credit: PC Lenka...
by David Burns | Apr 11, 2024 | Stories
By Carter Cromwell Though Chris Beyers’ baseball career is trending upward now – he stars in the German 1st Bundesliga, performed for the South African national team in the World Baseball Classic, and is set to play this fall in the inaugural season of Baseball United...
by David Burns | Apr 2, 2024 | Stories
This month’s Member Spotlight is beaming down on an MiLB Rawlings Gold Glove winner, 3x professional league champion, and 2-year Party Animal with the Savannah Bananas, who has now arrived in the Czech Republic for his first season overseas. We present the...
by David Burns | Mar 16, 2024 | Stories
We got ahold of Agustín Tissera, an Argentina native and national team member, to talk about the Liga Argentina de Béisbol and his career to-date. Agustín plays for his hometown Córdoba and has traversed Europe as an international veteran. You’ve played in the LAB...
by David Burns | Feb 6, 2024 | Stories
By Carter Cromwell There was a point at which Daniel Catalan was considering life after baseball. Now it’s more like baseball is his life. A native of Los Angeles, Catalan played at a couple of junior colleges and at Holy Names College in Oakland, Calif. Upon...
by David Burns | Jan 10, 2024 | Stories
When Issei Washizaki decided nearly three years ago to start the Japan Winter League (JWL), his hope was that it would become a vehicle “for players to find their direction.” Judging from the early results, he’s accomplished that goal. And, in the process, pointed...
by David Burns | Jan 6, 2024 | Stories
Last season, Matt Malconian started his overseas career in Germany with the Füssen Royal Bavarians, a slight change of scenery from his San Diego desk job. Matt had entered the corporate world after a club baseball career at San Diego State where he was the...
by David Burns | Oct 15, 2023 | Stories
They say traveling around the world is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It is also said that finding your soulmate is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. For Chelsea Cohen and Tyler Krobetzky, they were lucky enough to have those rare experiences match in a small period...
by David Burns | Aug 28, 2023 | Stories
Mathias LaCombe is the embodiment of the old phrase “how quickly things can change”. At the beginning of this spring, he was a virtually unknown relief pitcher at a community college in a rural region of eastern Arizona who had trouble consistently throwing...
by David Burns | Aug 23, 2023 | Blog, Stories
If the particulars of Lennard Pietersz’ journey thus far were set to a medley of songs, an appropriate title track would be “The Long and Winding Road”. The native of Curacao, a former Dutch colony in the Caribbean now a “constituent country” of the Kingdom of the...
by David Burns | Jul 3, 2023 | Blog, Stories
Baseball. Uganda. For the vast majority of people, those words would not seem to belong in the same sentence. Yet, they do. There is baseball in Uganda – more than one might think – and that’s thanks to people such as Jaz Shergill and others. Shergill is a native...
by David Burns | May 22, 2023 | Stories
Gabriella Gonzalez represents a classic case of how quickly things can change. In a mere 11-day period back in 2016, her life’s path veered from typical to atypical. Gonzalez grew up in northern California and was a softball player and sometimes coach while...
by David Burns | Apr 24, 2023 | Blog, Stories
By participating for the first time in the recently completed World Baseball Classic, the Czech Republic’s national team checked off multiple items on its to-do list. “Before the tournament, we had three goals – increase the number of baseball fans in the Czech...
by David Burns | Mar 14, 2023 | Stories
Photo credit: Baseball Czech Jeff Barto pitched against the South Korean National Team at the Tokyo Dome as a representative of the Czech National Team this past Saturday in World Baseball Classic pool play. He threw 5.2 innings in relief, surrendering only 2 hits and...
by David Burns | Mar 10, 2023 | Blog, Stories
There was a time not long ago that Sarah Edwards thought she might live in Italy the rest of her life. But it turned out that this was not the time. Instead, the rest of her life began March 1 in Clearwater, Florida, spring training home of Major League Baseball’s...
by David Burns | Dec 1, 2022 | Blog, Stories
By David Burns December 1, 2022 After polling our newsletter and social media audience about the top coaches in Europe in 2022, a number of European and import coaches were nominated. Will Swindling’s story stood out to us as our first coach feature, not only because...
by David Burns | Nov 24, 2022 | Blog, Stories
Written by: Carter Cromwell November 23, 2022 “The manager would like to see you in his office” is a line usually guaranteed to make a ballplayer think “uh, oh” and envision a trek to the guillotine. But in Kaleb Bowman’s case, it meant he would be moving onward and...
by David Burns | Oct 14, 2022 | Blog, Stories
By Carter Cromwell October 15, 2022 When the World Baseball Classic begins next March, the Czechs will most likely be an underdog, but that won’t faze them. After all, the Czech team wasn’t a favorite before the recent qualifying round, but it proved adept at...