“Later we started to do it seriously as a practical joke and the abbreviation ISBA is my abbreviation because I started to publish or write a bulletin, this magazine, it was called Bulletin ISBA and ISBA is the abbreviation of International Softball and Baseball Association, so it was downright a humorous name and those bulletins are preserved. We published some statistics from our games, there are those notes from these, we started to write down how many homeruns each had. We evaluated each player and I put it all into this bulletin. So, the ISBA abbreviation is humorous and at the beginning there were two teams which we created and we played against each other.”
“It happened this way – we read some newspapers and out of a sudden we saw: ‘George Voskovec staring’ in some theatre play. And we knew each other with Werich, my parents and I wrote to Mr. Werich if he thinks I can meet Voskovec and perhaps invite him somewhere. And Mr. Werich wrote me: ‘Yes, for sure, visit him, say that you invite him for a sup and that Ferda Kokos from Prague recommended you to do it.’ And thus I, we bought tickets, went to see the play, Voskovec played the main role there. And during the pause I went to him and said to him: ‘Ferda Kokos from Prague sends me to invite you to a dinner.’ And he brightened up, he was very happy because he was of course terribly bored in Buffalo. Well, he came to us already after the lunch and spent the whole afternoon with us, until the evening. And we talked about everything. Well, and he awfully recommended us to stay there. He said: ‘Look, if you have some kind of talent, you have to make use of it at full blast and the USA is simply the country where you can capitalize on it very easily.’”
“So, I came from the excursion and there were many colleagues from the USA at that congress and I invited them to our house and we had a party in the evening on 20th. And they were at our place and we drank everything and it was good and then they left. And we slept and heard some rumbles but nothing, everything was alright. In the morning my wife and I took the car and decided to go from Pankrác, where we lived, to technics [Czech Technical University – trans.] at Kulaťák [Vítězné náměstí – trans.]. And we went and saw the queues before shops. We said to each other: ‘What is going on?’ And we went and out of a sudden when we crossed over the bridge, tanks drove against us and I stopped and asked someone there: ‘Excuse me, what is going on?’ And he was crying: ‘You do not know?! We are being occupied!’ Well, I just stared and did not know what to do, but I moved off, I passed tanks like this and arrived at Kulaťák. It was full of tanks. I came to the congress and people who have already started to clean up it there told me what is going on. And what was interesting – we went to threaten the tankmen there and to debate with them. And every department had, I think, at that time their own vnitrák [members of security bodies of Ministry of Interior – trans.] who administered it in this aspect. And our vnitrák was quite distinct because he was completely bald and not an old man. And suddenly I saw him threatening those Russkies, so they were incredibly cunning. Anyway, the congress had to end and they allowed a transport for those foreigners, so they had to leave but many of those geologists took plenty photos of the occupation and it was published later in various newspapers all over the world. And I went to say goodbye to my friends to the station and I must say tears were running down our cheeks when they were leaving because we though we see each other for the last time.”
Tomáš Pačes was born on 9 August 1937 in Prague. His father was dismissed as the senior doctor at the Bulovka Hospital after 1948 and Tomáš was not allowed to study at a grammar school because of an unfavourable cadre assessment. After studying at a geological industrial school, he was able to start to work at a geological institution and he was recommended to study at a university. In 1967 he was able to leave to study at the Stanford University in the USA for one and half a year, and in 1970 to New York for two years. He was not a member of Communist Party but thanks to the special status of the geological institution he was able to quite freely travel on business trips abroad during normalization. Since 1947 he was member of the 5th Port Sea Scouts which was led by Jaroslav Novák-Braťka. With other friends from the scout group, he was at the beginning of softball competition in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and established originally humorous organization International Softball and Baseball Association (ISBA).
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
