Jakub Hajtmar: It was a massive close battle
We interview a number of players and coaches right after the end of the fifth and the final Extraliga game. One of those were a long-term Draci core player Jakub Hajtmar.
Jakub, this is another title for the collection for you. It was hard fought, what do you say?
It was hard. Look, I don’t remember a title, that was easy to get. You get two teams in the best form and with the best players in the finals and it’s about three games. Who snatches them first. This was a massive, close battle. They have a great team and I have nothing but respect for them. They fought. It didn’t go according to the plan for them at the beginning and everything had to click. But they finished the second in the regular season, behind us, and the same went for TOP 6. I wished them to get to the finals, because I knew it would be a good Czech Series. They have good players that make difference. Be it Barry (Martin Červenka – author’s note) who is the best player here, who drives it. Miňa (Marek Minařík – author’s note), good imports. They have a lot of national team players. I have a great respect for the organization and the team.
The team around you changed a lot recently. There are a lot of young players this season. What was it like to play with them?
They are great. I’ve been here forever and I went through it. I was a young player, and then I was older and older and now I have the role of an experienced player. I’m really happy that they got to experience it, the entire season. The ups and downs, they got to the finals and we were able to snatch the win, even with the young players. With the players who played it for the first time. But the organization is set like this, that it’s good to get to the finals, but it’s success to win. I’m glad they took it to heart and it wasn’t like “we are young, we will just play”, but rather “we are young and we will win”.
You reached a number of individual milestones this year, you moved in historical stats. You recently reached 300 stolen bases, which is one of the milestones, which will be tough to beat. Which of the individual accolades do you value the most?
Baseball is a collective sport. If someone asks me what are the best of my accolades, I will tell them 16 titles with Draci. The fact that I have individual accolades means I have people around me who push me to go for them. This is not my strong suit. I have to thank Milujeme Baseball and baseball-stat.cz, because I wouldn’t know I broke any records otherwise. It always pops up on Instagram, when somebody tags me and I only find out after the weekend. But as I said, I’m very lucky, because I’ve been playing with a group of players that are above average and they basically help me to these accolades. For me, the number one [focus] is the title. It is a collective work that I won’t ever forget. Individual statistics are nice, but I’m more interested in titles.
We have European Championship ahead of us. You have a lot titles in Extraliga, a success in World Baseball Classic qualification, but you still miss success in Europe.
Europe at home is a huge motivation. For me and for everyone. I played many of those “Europes”, but I still miss a medal from European Championship. My focus for the season was mainly about the title with Draci, and to prepare 100% for European Championship to help to a historical medal. These are the things I can do something about. The preparations for the season were likely the biggest I’ve ever do. I knew we had a lot of highlights of the season. World Baseball Classic, Extraliga with young players, European Championship at home. So there was a lot to make me say “Ok. I will wake up at five in the morning. I will train three times a day to be prepared for all these things.” These are the things I can do. I can look in the mirror and tell myself I did the best I could to be ready. The rest will show.
