The Neurologist Dreams Pavel Chadim''s waiting room is full. Inside the concrete office building located on a quiet side street near Brno''s bustling, student-filled city center, his patients wait for the neurologist to call them into his office. But how many know they also have an appointment with the manager of the Czech national baseball team? There are no kitschy baseball paintings on the cheerful yellow walls or any jerseys or caps from Chadim''s playing career. You would need to look closely at the decor inside Chadim''s pristine white examination room to find the smallest sign of his other life: up on a shelf within a pale green cabinet, you''ll find a framed photograph and a few baseballs--mementos from all his years spent out on the field. Every member of the Czech national team must work a second job, but some occupations make more sense for an athlete than others. Star shortstop and pitcher Martin Schneider is a firefighter, putting to use the same athleticism and courage he displays on the field in his nine-to- five (or, since shifts are twenty-four hours long, nine-to- nine). Outfielder Matej Mensík is a coach, and catcher and first baseman Martin Muzík is the caretaker for his Extraliga team''s home field. Pitcher Lukás Ercoli works for the Czech Baseball Association--he''s the media and communications director, making baseball both his hobby and his livelihood.

Then there''s Chadim: a neurologist who must balance a thriving practice with the sport that has brought him a measure of global fame, all while few within his home country know anything (or care) about the game he has devoted his life to. But how does a successful medical professional find himself moonlighting as a national baseball hero? Well, without baseball, he might not have entered the medical field at all. The team doctor at Draci Brno, the baseball club where Chadim played as a teenager, was a neurologist. He became one of Chadim''s friends and took him under his wing, influencing his future career path. "Personally, I like balance in the three points of my life," Chadim said. "One is family, one is sport, and one is my job. Why is this so important? If you are just playing sports and you get injured, what do you do after?" Chadim tried to give up baseball in the mid-2000s to focus more on his job and family, but he couldn''t make it stick. He claims (perhaps joking, perhaps not) that he started getting tremors in his hands when he had been away from the field for too long.

"I had tremors. I had [withdrawal] syndrome," Chadim said. "I had played for more than twenty years. After one year off, I came back." Now in his fifties, Chadim exudes a youthful energy that belies his age. Beneath a shaved head, he is quick to smile and laugh, his handshakes coming in enthusiastic two-handed pumps. He may split his time between three different lives, but the man you meet in any of them is always the same: kind, considerate, warmhearted. The reviews for his neurology practice echo this, each one a testimony gushing over Chadim''s bedside manner.

Chadim''s profession gives him unique insight as the manager of the national team. When he studied anatomy, he was enthralled by the diagrams: the thin, colorful braids of red, blue, yellow, and green, crisscrossing like roads on a map, connecting the nervous, motor, sensitive, and sympathetic systems. "I remember saying to myself, ''This is great logic,''" Chadim explained. "''I like this logic. I like the brain. I like the nerves. I like the systemic direction of the body.''" He brings this rationale to his work with the national team, as well as a certain sense of perspective.

Often the stakes of sports are talked about in life-and-death terms, the emotional heft given to each contest--be it a simple exhibition or a gold medal matchup--far outweighing its actual impact in the real world. Chadim, though, has seen pain, real pain, up close. He sees it when he''s working with a patient suffering from Alzheimer''s or Parkinson''s and understands that in the big picture, baseball is simply a game. "If you see a young, twenty-year-old guy [who suffered a] stroke hemiparesis, I thought, ''How can you be sad when your pitcher is crying because he gave up a home run in some game?''" Chadim asked over lunch at his practice in Brno. "If you see how hard life is, how hard many people''s lives are--it helps me. Life is short; enjoy every day. It''s my motto, what I believe." Just like the men on the national team roster, Chadim has had to juggle his career and his passion for baseball.

One year, early in his days as a neurologist, he was meant to be on hospital rounds at the same time he was supposed to be playing in the Czech Extraliga summer All-Star game. He pulled a colleague aside. "Please," Chadim begged. "I will have my phone with me. Just call if you need me, and in twenty minutes I will be back." Fortunately, there were no urgent crises that day, and Chadim''s absence went unnoticed--until he was interviewed after the game on Czech television. Then Chadim''s phone rang. "Hey," his coworker said.

"I''m here with two more of your colleagues. We see you on tv.".