By Aurelien Breeden

Bleu, Blanc, Baseball? by Aurelien Breeden © Aurelien Breeden 1 Pershing Stadium, Bois de Vincennes – Five garbage collectors watch a baseball game. he five garbage collectors unfamiliar crack of a bat connecting seem confused as they walk with a ball. T up to this secluded spot of The smell of hamburgers and the Bois de Vincennes, a sprawling hot dogs on the grill wafts through the public park that borders the eastern air as they approach the fence and stop edge of Paris. They are here to empty to watch the ball game. One of them is the trashcans around a sporting sporting a tribal tattoo on his bicep; complex known as the Pershing another tucks his fluorescent jacket Stadium, which includes a race track into a pocket, revealing a green hoody and a cluster of soccer fields. A group with a growling bulldog underneath. of men nearby are playing boules on a Gruff and burly, the five men stand dirt track, and their metal balls fall to and watch. the ground with a familiar thud. But in “Ah, you see, after three this corner of the compound, the five players are eliminated, they switch.” men are drawn to the much more “But why was he eliminated?” © Aurelien Breeden 2 “It’s because he arrived after Baseball, Softball and Cricket the ball.” Federation (FFBSC) has a little over “The ball really goes fast…” 10,000 members and a yearly budget “No wonder they wear that hovers at 1 million euros, both of protection.” which are 200 times less than what the Minutes go by as the five men French Soccer Federation has. Even slowly piece together the rules of this the French Baton Twirling Federation strange game, until one of them attracts more members than the wonders aloud where the teams are FFBSC. from. “The ones in red? They are from With little to no presence in the Beaucaire,” comes an answer from the French media or sporting culture, other spectators. “Ah. And the ones in players often stumble upon the sport black?” “They are from Sénart.” the same way the five garbage “Oh really?” The man in the collectors did, by accident. Their green hoody pauses. “Wait…so you chances of discovering and loving the mean they are from here?” he says. sport depend on the fluctuating cycles Beaucaire is in the southeast of France, of France’s love-hate relationship with and Sénart is a town 25 miles south of the United States. In the past, Paris. Both teams are here for the baseball’s development in France has Challenge de France, a yearly baseball often hinged upon events like World tournament that brings together the War I or France’s NATO exit; today, it best French teams. is still part of American soft power, “We thought they were deployed by the State Department and foreigners!” Major League Baseball (MLB) alike. Many stay committed once aseball is a sport so alien to most they are pulled in, despite the financial, B in France that the very idea of structural and cultural obstacles that French baseball players and clubs feels stand in baseball’s way. There is a odd. It has one of the oldest and most crying lack of fields, money, publicity complex sporting histories in the and professional prospects, but they country, and yet club presidents and keep the flame burning. “You have to federation officials alike feel they be different to take care of baseball in spend most of their time convincing France,” said Didier Seminet, the people they actually exist. The French FFBSC president for the past three © Aurelien Breeden 3 years. “Because of all the constraints it The history of a little known generates and the little visibility it has, sport it’s really a calling.” calling is how one could A describe Jean-Christophe Tiné’s self-ascribed mission: to uncover the early history of baseball in France and to lay it out for all to see. Tiné is a 42- year-old senior financial lawyer at a large French corporation who until last year was secretary general at the FFBSC – as a volunteer, like the Source: French Ministry of Sports, 2011 © Aurelien Breeden 4 overwhelming majority of those who Tiné’s combined passion for work in baseball here. history and baseball has led him to dig Tall and blond, with a square up surprising anecdotes about the sport face and boyish features, Tiné fell in between the 1880s and the 1930s, love with baseball thanks to one of his when a series of factors did seem to uncles, a baseball coach for the French indicate France had such potential. national teams. The uncle came by Americans flocked to Paris Tiné’s house one day when he was 16, during the Belle Époque, many of them just before the school’s Mardi Gras artists who continued to play their carnival. national pastime in France. The “I needed a costume and I movement to revive the Olympic didn’t have anything at all,” Tiné games, led by Pierre de Coubertin, and recalls. “He told me ‘Come to my car, a general consensus that physical I’ll give you a uniform, a bat and a exercise was necessary to energize the glove.’ I had never touched a glove or nation after the 1870 defeat against a bat, and here I was, disguised as a Prussia also sparked interest in baseball player.” Six months later, baseball. The triumphs of American Tiné and some friends helped create sporting legend Jim Thorpe at the 1912 the Sénart Templars baseball club, the games in Stockholm spiked particular current runner-up in the French top-tier curiosity about the game. championship. “He was the prototype of the Last year, frustrated with perfect athlete that the French and the baseball’s lack of visibility, he started whole sporting community was a blog called ‘Forgotten history of a looking for at the time, a complete little known sport’ that chronicles the athlete,” Tiné says. “And he had emergence of the game in the late 19th played baseball. Suddenly, the French, and early 20th century. The blog’s URL inspired by Spalding and others, uses a quote by Albert Goodwill thought: ‘That’s what we need!’” Spalding, an American baseball player, In 1924, the year the FFBSC manager and entrepreneur who toured was founded, a series of exhibition the world in 1888 and 1889 to promote games in Paris pitting the New York the sport and who declared on Jan. 9, Giants against the Chicago White Sox 1914 that "The next baseball country drew 4,000 spectators, although many will be France.” of them were probably American © Aurelien Breeden 5 expatriates. Even the French military took a keen interest in baseball, according to authors Don and Petie Kladstrup, an American couple that live here and are writing a book about baseball in France. “By the time World War I rolled around, the French were very eager to have America come into the war,” Petie Kladstrup says. “They decided that one of the best ways to do it was to make sure that if the Americans came they felt welcome. So they ordered the poilus [French infantrymen] to learn to play baseball.” A ship called The Kansan was sent over, full of baseball equipment paid for by the Ball and Bat Fund which had been established by Major League Two men socialize at the Challenge de baseball owners to support the war France effort. German U-boats sank it in the Bay of Biscay on July 10, 1917. ut France did not embrace French military authorities Bbaseball the way it embraced even saw baseball as a possible other American sports that crossed the training regimen for its soldiers. “We Atlantic during the same period. had just come out of trench warfare, French sociologist Peter Marquis, who where you needed to be able to run teaches American studies at the quickly from one trench to another and University of Rouen and who plays to lob grenades into other trenches,” baseball himself, has studied the Tiné explains. “In the French army, sporting interactions between there was a regular grenade throwing American soldiers and the French contest, where each regiment sent their population during World War I. Many best thrower. When the Americans of them took place in resting houses arrived, they beat everybody.” © Aurelien Breeden 6 for soldiers set up by a French branch cars, pin-ups and American movies all of the YMCA, where Americans fascinated and shaped the personalities introduced sports like volleyball, of many artists, and still do today,” basketball and baseball to the French. Marquis says. “Popular culture like But baseball still didn’t spread beyond comic books had a strong impact. So the confines of the small expatriate or why wasn’t baseball part of that anglophile community. baggage?” “In the years after the war, French president Charles de thousands of French people started Gaulle’s decision to withdraw France playing basketball thanks to from the North Atlantic Treaty patronages, these Christian groups that Organization’s integrated military organized youth activities,” Marquis command in 1966 certainly didn’t says. “Baseball wasn’t chosen by this help. “We consider that the NATO exit pre-existing network, and its spread really put us at a disadvantage, because became difficult.” we lost all the Americans who were Another influx of American stationed in France on military bases,” troops during World War II did says François Collet, the head of nothing to change the situation. “I communications at the FFBSC. often read about GIs talking about how In 1967, as the last American it was great to play "their" game on troops were leaving France, their French soil,” says Josh Chetwynd, a colleagues in Germany and Italy former baseball player, in an email.

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