When Czechs find out that Marek Blajer plays baseball against some of the best competition in the world, they usually ask him whether he throws the ball or swings the bat.

"That's like asking a hockey player if he skates while playing hockey," Blajer, 21, said. "But on the other hand, it's positive that the majority of people have even heard about baseball."

Blajer, a player in the Czech Baseball Association Extra League, didn't have access to proper equipment at his cottage growing up — he learned to play with a tennis ball and a pickaxe handle.

So it goes in a country where hockey is king, and spring signals the end of the sports season rather than the start of it.

As the new professional baseball season starts April 22, the Czech Baseball Association (ČBA) is still struggling after more than 10 years to give the sport a foothold on the Czech market.

'No magic recipe'

The ČBA's Extra League has been steadily growing in popularity since its inception in 1993, and the sport gained some traction by hosting the European Baseball Championships last year.

The league now fields eight teams and some 170 players, some of whom are paid. But attendance at games has been inconsistent, ranging from a few hundred fans to as many as 1,500.

ČBA Managing Director Jiří Votinský said turning baseball into a major professional league has been an arduous process.

"I think there is no magic recipe," he said, adding that the ČBA has been trying to indoctrinate kids at a young age to pick up a baseball bat rather than a hockey stick by getting the sport into youth physical education programs and by creating youth leagues.

The Czech Republic has yet to have a player create the interest in baseball that Yao Ming did with basketball in China.

"Of course, some superstar in the Major League would help," he said.

The biggest Czech name in the history of the American Major League was Elmer Valo, a right-fielder who played for six different teams in the 1940s, '50s and '60s. The native of Rybník, south Bohemia, hit .282 with 58 homeruns during his 20-year career — hardly numbers that would create an international sensation.

A tough gig

Some of the players in the Extra League are paid, but not much. Teams don't reveal player salaries, but Votinský put the typical salary at around 15,000 Kč ($638) a month. Admission to games is free, so teams have to rely solely on sponsors to outfit their team and pay their players.

That puts the Extra League in a catch-22: Its most talented players take more lucrative offers to play in the United States or with European superpowers Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. That reduces the league's ability to draw strong sponsorship, which keeps player salaries low.

"It's well known that nowadays everything is about the money first and the sport second — baseball is no exception," said Altron Krč third-baseman Blajer. "Money is related to the quality of the players."

His teammate, shortstop Petr Baroch, left April 13 to play for the ERCH Penguins in the Netherlands.

The Extra League also lost right-handed pitcher Jakub Toufar. The 19-year-old from Brno signed a contract with the Minnesota Twins in August and is expected to be assigned to their developmental team this summer.

And unlike those European superpowers, the Czech Republic doesn't have a wealth of talent with which to fill the gaps left by departing players, said Richard Kania, manager of Sokol Krč.

"It's hard to find talented players," Kania said. "But the advantage of baseball is that you don't need to be extremely talented to become successful, so even the least talented can succeed."

Another problem is that while the game has created a general following around the country, Prague has by and large shunned the game. For some reason, Bohemians took to softball in the early 1990s and have never embraced baseball, Votinský said.

The result is that baseball in the Czech Republic has become a Moravian game. Most of the teams in the Extra League are in Moravia — Brno alone has three of them.

The ČBA sent 36 players to spring training in Florida in the first weeks of April, where they played exhibition matches against players from the organizations of the Minnesota Twins, Cincinnati Reds, Boston Red Sox and Pittsburgh Pirates.