by Michal Hanus
Saturday is usually dedicated for Extraleague games this season. The first exception is the All Star game which is scheduled for Saturday May 7th at Municipal Baseball Stadium in Brno (home field of Draci Brno). Program starts at 12:30 with some individual competitions. At 2pm the baseball game between Draci Brno and Czech National Baseball team, which for the first time will be coached by Andy Berglund, will start. During the game some awards for the 2010 season will be handed over.
The Miroslav Vojtisek Award for the best hitter goes to Jan Drabek (Eagles Praha), Ales Hrabe award for the hitter with the most homeruns will go to Martin Stritecky (Technika Brno) and Martin Schneider (Draci Brno), the play-ball.cz Award for the best pitcher will go to Trevor Coughey (Technika Brno, now Astros Valencia), the Jim Jones Award for the rookie of the year goes to Tomas Sykora (Eagles Praha) and the Louisville Slugger Award for the play-off MVP will be handed to Pat Ahearne (Draci Brno).
On Sunday the Extraleague will continue. The most interesting game of weekend will be played in Brno at Kravi Hora where the leader of Extraleague Technika Brno will host the second ranked team Kotlarka Praha. Technika reinforced its team very well, there is high probability that Roger Deago will be ready for his return to Czech mounds.
Draci Brno will travel to Prague for doubleheader with Eagles. First game will start at 1pm at Krc baseball facility. The last team in Extraleague Cardion Hrosi Brno will host in Blansko Arrows Ostrava and Skokani Olomouc will take on Express Brno. Both games will be very close and it’s very hard to predict winner of those series.
The big positive of Extraleague 2011 is that Draci Brno are not so dominating like in past season. Now they have already three losses the same amount for whole season 2010. Technika Brno again brought to their roster very good imports and finally Kotlarka Praha with very young roster is one year older, and much more experienced this season.
{mrb-schedule:2011-05-07|2011-05-08|CZ}
{mrb-standing:czech-republic-2011}