The Czech Baseball Extraliga, or simply Extraliga, is the highest level of

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch ...

in the Czech Republic. The league was established in 1993 after the

dissolution of Czechoslovakia The dissolution of Czechoslovakia, which took effect on December 31, 1992, was the Self-determination, self-determined Partition (politics), partition of the federal republic of Fifth Czechoslovak Republic, Czechoslovakia into the independent ...

. The league is currently contested by eight teams and the games are played from April to May with the playoffs beginning in June. The Extraliga operates a promotion and relegation system with the 1. Liga (the second tier baseball league in Czech Republic) where the bottom teams from the Extraliga are relegated to the 1. Liga and the top teams from the 1. Liga are promoted to the Extraliga.

History

The Czechoslovak Baseball League was established in 1979, and Tempo Praha became the first baseball champions. However, in 1993, after the

, the league was disbanded and the Czech Baseball Extraliga was established, comprising teams only from the Czech Republic. The first Extraliga champions were Technika Brno, winners of the 1993 and 1994 seasons. Draci Brno rapidly became the dominant team in the league, winning every season from 1995 to 2010 and eight more times after that, totalling 24 championships, the most recent in 2023. In recent years, Arrows Ostrava won two championships back to back in 2018 and 2019 and again in 2021, becoming the second most winning team in the Extraliga, tied with Technika Brno. The Extraliga was one of the first sports leagues in Europe, and the first major baseball league in the world, to restart following lockdowns concerning the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

Foreign players

Since 2016, the Extraliga allows a maximum of five foreign players on a team roster and there is a limit of three foreigners in the team's lineup at the same time during a game. This changed during 2020, when, due to the

, foreign players were banned, except for residents of the Czech Republic. This ban was lifted for the 2021 season and the rules remained as they were before 2020. Notable Extraliga foreign players include some former major leaguers. Panamanian pitcher Roger Deago played for Technika Brno in 1997 and 1998 before signing as an amateur free agent by the

San Diego Padres The San Diego Padres are an American professional baseball team based in San Diego. The Padres compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (baseball), National League (NL) National League West, West Division. ...

in 2002 and making his

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...

debut in 2003; Deago returned to Technika for the 2011 season. In 2019, Draci Brno signed Australian pitcher Peter Moylan, who played 11 games, winning three and losing one. Historically, the majority of foreign players in the Extraliga come from North America, Latin America and Australia.

Current teams

Winners

External links

Extraliga
(in Czech)

References

{{Baseball leagues Baseball leagues in Europe Professional sports leagues in the Czech Republic