Electrician strikes out Shohei Ohtani at World Baseball Classic

Ondrej Satoria made the memory of a lifetime on Saturday.

The World Baseball Classic is giving an opportunity to some of the greatest professional baseball players in the world to show what they can do. It’s also giving an opportunity to people who do things other than play pro ball, like Satoria and the rest of his Czech Republic WBC team.

The Czech Republic surprisingly qualified for the 2023 WBC and is in Group B, where Japan is the home team and favored to win the pool. Unlike some teams like the United States, Japan and the Dominican Republic, which are full of star professional players, the Czech Republic is full of players who do something other than play baseball for a living.

Their starting pitcher against Japan on Saturday was Satoria, who works as a technician for an electric company. Satoria held Japan scoreless for two innings. The highlight came in the third when he struck out international superstar Shohei Ohtani with one out and a runner on second in the bottom of the third.

Ondřej Satoria, the 5'8 starter for @BaseballCzech, works as a technician for an electricity company.

Today he struck out 4 players from Japan whilst never throwing harder than 79.3mph.

This included Shohei Ohtani… pic.twitter.com/EdUZMtGO85

— Baseball Brit (@BaseballBrit) March 11, 2023

That’s pretty impressive. Satoria was keeping the ball down and throwing tons of off-speed stuff with movement.

The electrician struck out four batters and allowed three runs on five hits over three innings. He got Ohtani out twice and exited down 3-1.

Ohtani delivered an RBI double later in the game, which Japan won 10-2. But Ohtani and Japan had nothing but respect for the Czech Republic.

The Japanese fans and even Team Japan had so much respect for the Czech team tonight. This is one reason out of many why international competition is important.

Here is what Shohei Ohtani posted after the game pic.twitter.com/PEx9c2AXwY

— Michael Clair (@michaelsclair) March 11, 2023