By Aurelien Breeden

Bleu,

Blanc,

Baseball?

by Aurelien Breeden

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. maintained a steady presence that Chetwynd authored ‘Baseball In would prove valuable decades later Europe,’ a country-by-country when they left fields and a history of exploration of the sport in the Old playing behind them. Today, there are Continent. “I don't blame them. They three times as many baseball players in were homesick...But the attitude, Germany as there are in France, and generally speaking, wasn't ‘Let’s focus Alessandro Liddi recently became the on getting the French to love the first player born and raised in Italy to game.’” play in the American major leagues, Even the post-World War II with the Seattle Mariners. reconstruction craze for all things American did not usher in an era of French baseball. “Jazz, rock, chrome © Aurelien Breeden 7 any French school children years under President George W. Bush M still play thèque, a centuries- has helped bring in more players. old ball game similar to baseball, “Baseball is a sport that has which only thickens the mystery as to always been in the landscape, even if why baseball didn’t catch on. most French people aren’t aware of it,” It is unclear whether thèque Tiné says. “The French public knows might have evolved into baseball at what baseball is, they know about the some point in time. Baseball historian sport. But actually trying to get into the David Block, the author of ‘Baseball sport and understanding the rules, Before We Knew It,’ wrote in a that’s more difficult.” chapter called ‘The Mysterious French Connection’ that there were too many variations of thèque and too many contradictory historical accounts of its origins since the Middle Ages to make that claim. “There is no doubt that baseball originated in England, but it is possible that older ball games practiced on the continent may have crossed the English Channel or North Sea in earlier centuries and somehow influenced this process,” Block added in an email, noting that there was no direct evidence of such a crossing. “In the minds of many French people, baseball is an American sport,” Tiné says. “There are those who like it because they like what’s American, and there are those who don’t like what’s American.” He believes the improvement of Franco-American relations since 2008 after the rocky

© Aurelien Breeden 8 He stops and looks at the pebbles strewn across the mound, half-amused, half desperate. The Devils are playing two home games against the Cards, another local team from a town nearby called Meyzieu. Players clear out empty beer bottles left by squatters from one of the dugouts, which are painted bright red and blue but are covered in graffiti. Morning dew and remnants of the previous day’s downpour cling to the grass as the Devils take out balls, bats and helmets from an old container and set out with the chalk marker to

delineate the outfield. According to The Devils warm up in the suburbs of Baptiste Fourmaux, the Devils’ coach, Lyon. “of all the fields I’ve been to in the

region, ours might be the best. Most Field of dreams? don’t even have a dugout.”

Soon, though, it could be gone. swear these rocks are “We went to see the mayor to fix up multiplying.” “I the current field,” says Sylviane Mark Schapiro is the American Consul Garcia, president of the Devils club. in Lyon, France’s third most populated “She told us very plainly that we city and a crossroads between the north couldn’t because it isn’t land that and south of France that sits on the belongs to Saint Priest but to Lyon, Rhône and Saône rivers. He is also a and that it can’t be built upon. She told New Yorker and a devout Yankees us that eventually, the houses around it fan. But on this chilly morning in are going to choke it off, and we won’t April, as he rakes the pitcher’s mound, be able to play anymore.” Schapiro is second baseman for the Problems that all small clubs Devils, a baseball club with 120 face – managing small budgets, members based in the suburbs of Lyon. juggling conflicting personal © Aurelien Breeden 9 commitments and working with local Varnat is a former hypermarket authorities – are multiplied ten-fold manager from Agen, a city in the for amateur baseball players in France. southwest of France that sits squarely And the slow creep of neighboring in rugby territory. In 1982, his son construction projects is one of the came back from school with the firm biggest issues for the Devils, a club intention of playing baseball after created in 2002 with the merger of the reading about it in class. A year later, baseball teams from Bron and Saint with no background in the game Priest, both small towns in suburban whatsoever – he played soccer as a Lyon. semi-pro – Varnat founded the Agen They aren’t the only ones with Blue Catchers ball club with an neighborhood problems. The fate of entrepreneur who had just come back the Savigny-sur-Orge baseball club is a from Canada. cautionary tale for many baseball fans Varnat has short white hair, salt here. Located in the southern suburbs and pepper stubble and steely blue of Paris, the Savigny-sur-Orge Lions eyes matching his steely resolve, are one of France’s best baseball clubs, which was put to the test when his son with five championship titles and a died in a car accident at the age of 25. thirty-year-old history. Last year, “It was also the time of my life however, neighbors filed a petition when I was having health problems complaining about the dangers of stray and I had to stop working,” Varnat balls landing on their property. The says as he sits on the bench in the town hall promptly enforced a stadium Devil’s dugout, wearing a Chicago ban for the adult teams, and pending a Cubs jacket. “He had lots of baseball solution like higher backstop netting, projects. I took up the torch to honor only little leaguers can play. my son’s memory, because I needed Armand Varnat, the president to.” He has been involved in baseball of the Rhône Alpes baseball league, since then and became president of the knows it’s only a matter of time before Rhône Alpes league in 2009. a similar fate befalls clubs in his Much of his work involves region. “We know that eventually promoting and developing baseball in Saint Priest is threatened, Meyzieu is his region. There were eight clubs threatened,” he says at the game. when he took over the league. Today there are 12, with five more in the © Aurelien Breeden 10 works. In Cruzilles-les-Mépillat, a tiny village north of Lyon, he helped set up top-notch baseball facilities with showers and locker rooms, luxuries that only clubs with financial backing and strong local support can afford.

Top left: Housing construction is slowly creeping towards the field. Top right: Richard Duregne fills in as coach for the

Devils. Bottom left: The Devils pitch in the first inning of game 1. Bottom right: A

Devil starts running to first base.

© Aurelien Breeden 13 he day is not unfolding well for various local authorities with the T the Devils. They claw their way American consulate’s assistance. back to an honorable 10-6 loss after Pushing for baseball, Schapiro conceding five runs in the first inning said, “fits very neatly” with public of their first game, but the second one diplomacy objectives like promoting is starting with a similar slump. American culture and doing youth Encouragements and outreach, but not all local authorities exhortations to “make decisions, are receptive. “Some people get it, and dammit” and to “get a move on” some people don’t,” he says later at the stream forth from the dugout, where consulate, a small office in central players shelter from the afternoon’s Lyon that overlooks the Rhône River. first drops of rain. There are no fans or And those who do get it don’t always spectators, and not just because of the have subsidies to spare for baseball, weather. “If you had places for them to which is heavily dependent on sit, you might get 100 to 150 people, financial help from the state. based on families and friends,” “You build a gymnasium, you Schapiro says. “On a nice day, we get can play volleyball, squash, 15 to 20 people showing up.” badminton, indoor soccer, basketball,” Right now, Armand Varnat’s says Collet, the FFBSC head of major project is the Trèfle – French for communications. “A city that builds a clover. He reaches into his backpack gymnasium is going to serve 20 and pulls out a file with “Let’s Go different sports associations.” A city Rhône Alpes!” written on the cover that builds a baseball field only serves and a picture of four baseball fields one, often the smallest at that. arranged like a four-leaved clover. In a sense, the Devils are lucky. The Trèfle baseball complex The club that predated the merger was would include locker rooms, four created in 1976 and was able to obtain fields with synthetic grass and seating a field when the mayor, who had for 500 on one of them. The estimated friends at the club and had promised to price tag is 5 to 6 million euros, but the build one, was successfully elected. baseball federation’s real issue is “Saint Priest kept its commitment to finding the 50,000 square meters of baseball, even after that mayor left,” land it needs to build the facility. Garcia says, who has been club Varnat has been pitching the project to president for the past nine years. © Aurelien Breeden 14 Eight years ago, the town hall paid 70,000 euros for the dugouts, fences and the backstop netting. Four years ago, it paid 35,000 euros for dry toilets – which Garcia says was a salutary change from the neighboring field the players had to use before. “It was hell with the farmer. He planted wheat there, but we had no other choice,” Garcia says. “Stray balls would also land in the field, and they would ruin his machinery.” The farmer and his field are now gone, but the club’s worries aren’t. There are still no showers or The Devils’ dugout. locker rooms. Trespassers regularly come for barbecues or quad bike he afternoon ends with a second rodeos over the pitcher’s mound. The defeat (14-8) and muddy shoes. field has a locked entrance on one side T Richard Duregne, a towering 32-year- but is still accessible from the other old with the number 77 on his back because the door there was stolen – and a cigarette in his hand, says family twice. Baseball bats have gone and friends aren’t really involved in his missing. baseball life, which started when a

friend of a friend brought him to a

game in Toulouse. “It’s more of a

personal pleasure,” he says as he walks toward a group of Renaults and Peugeots with major league logos on their rear windshields. On the drive back to Lyon, this manager at a biotechnology quality control firm launches into an impassioned declaration of love for the

© Aurelien Breeden 15 sport. He learned the rules playing ball and a glove to try it out with his video games. He used to read Strike son. They even went to see a Giants Out, a French baseball magazine that game. “It was a vacation gimmick,” no longer exists. He loves Japanese Carbonne said. baseball manga like “Rookies” or But when they got back to “Major”, which, with the Nintendo France, his son wanted more and asked Wii, are some of the more if he could play in Paris. To unconventional ways French children Carbonne’s great surprise, it turned out discover the game. “People don’t have he could. He signed his son up with the negative preconceptions of baseball,” Paris University Club, or P.U.C., he says. “It’s more like: “No shit, it which has one of the oldest baseball exists in France?” sections in the country. Soon his Duregne is particularly daughter followed. disappointed that “42”, the recent “If you want your kid to play, Jackie Robinson biopic, was not you’ve got to follow them, you’ve got released in France. Warner Brothers to get involved,” Carbonne says at the probably reckoned that the subtleties Mortemart Stadium, a small field also of stealing bases – one of Robinson’s located in the Bois de Vincennes specialties – would be lost upon a where the P.U.C. little leaguers were French audience. But if Hollywood playing on a March weekend. Now, can’t be trusted to convert France to Carbonne says, “We are hooked.” baseball, who can? Behind him, for lack of a real organ, a small group of parents launches into Youth and international the baseball charge theme to encourage development their children in the biting cold. Getting them while they are

young is an essential strategy for hen Frédéric Carbonne, 47, baseball authorities in France. “The W was on vacation with his key for our federation is youth,” says family a few years ago in San Didier Seminet, the FFBSC president, Francisco, his seven-year-old son saw a bald man with square glasses and a an on-going baseball game in a public soul patch who used to play and park. Out of curiosity more than manage for Sénart. Not only do conviction, Carbonne bought a bat, a enthusiastic children help get parents © Aurelien Breeden 16 involved, they are the only way to expensive than in the United States and ensure the number of players continues that longer school days aren’t to grow. “conducive to spending more time at a Paradoxically, being one of sport.” France’s oldest team sports without Because baseball clubs aren’t anybody noticing actually helps. evenly spread out over France, finding “Because it never broke through, someone to play against can involve people in France see it as an innovative quite a road trip. “When you are 16 discipline,” Seminet says. To help and you have to cover approximately introduce baseball in schools, the 100 kilometers at minimum to play a FFBSC recently signed agreements game, you really have to be into it,” with the Primary Education Sporting Seminet says. Union, an organization that promotes These difficulties mean the sports in schools. FFBSC has a high turnover. “We lose France even has two baseball approximately 33% of our members training academies for high-school every year, which means that we have level players in Rouen and Toulouse, a problem keeping them,” Seminet which recently received $100,000 from says. “But we gain 35%.” That’s just the Baseball Tomorrow Fund, a grant enough to sustain a small growth rate, program managed by the MLB. but still not enough to reach 13,000 “French expertise in the training of members, the federation’s peak in the young players is fairly well early 1990s. recognized,” says Jean-Christophe Foreigners from countries with Tiné, the baseball historian. baseball cultures also help bring in But baseball’s small size and more members. The little leaguers lack of visibility still hamper its playing at Mortemart Stadium have development, mainly because it isn’t recently been joined by a group of the easiest extra-curricular activity to Japanese children. At the Challenge de chose for your child. Edith Back is an France, Latin pop blares from the American mother from Mississippi loudspeakers during breaks, a with two 15 and 12-year-old boys who testament to the strong presence of also play baseball at the P.U.C. She Latin American expatriates in French says baseball equipment is more baseball.

But the lack of adequate infrastructure and the small pool of members create a vicious circle. Clubs need operational facilities and sufficient staff to attract new members, Next pages: but they can’t get more subsidies or find skilled coaches willing to Left: A boy hangs on to the Pershing volunteer until they get new members. Stadium fence during the Challenge de Even those who make it into France. Right: Children play in the the best clubs have little to look inflatable batting cage at the Challenge de forward to if they want to pursue a France. professional career in baseball. “All the kids who play baseball in high school or in college dream of one thing only, the draft,” Seminet says of American players. “We don’t have the draft.”

© Aurelien Breeden 20 either do they have the He says state help dropped N Olympics. Baseball was played from 850,000 euros in 2008 to 450,000 sporadically at different Olympic euros today. “And it’s tumbling down games starting in 1904 and became an because we are in a context of crisis official sport for the 1992 Olympics in and austerity.” Barcelona, but the International There is hope that the IOC Olympic Committee (IOC) voted might vote to reinstate baseball and baseball and softball out in 2005. This softball this September after it dropped barred the sports from the 2008 and wrestling earlier this year. Wrestling is 2012 games in Beijing and London, trying to reclaim its spot for the 2020 with dire consequences for the FFBSC. games, and baseball is not the only one Unlike baseball leagues in the vying to replace it: climbing, squash, United States or in Japan, the FFBSC karate, wakeboarding, wushu and is in a public-private partnership with roller sports are also contenders. the French state whereby the Ministry of Sports gives the federation money to espite this Olympian setback, organize and run baseball. Government D there are tentative signs that subsidies make up roughly half of the French baseball is becoming FFBSC’s 1 million euro annual budget. increasingly visible in the world, The other half is brought in through starting with the MLB, which has an member licensing fees, tournament office in London. “We absolutely do entry fees and other external sources of believe there is potential in Europe,” income. says Mike McClellan, director of But Olympic sports get more international game development in money than regular ones. When the New York for the MLB. “Down the IOC dropped baseball and softball in road there is a business return, but it’s 2005 – the first time a sport was in the big picture,” he says, whether eliminated since polo was in 1936 – for recruiting talents or getting the FFBSC felt the pinch. “We Europeans to watch televised baseball. gradually lost nearly half of our According to McClellan, MLB subsidies,” says Collet, the federation’s interest in developing European head of communications. baseball started in the mid-1990s and has picked up since then. Every year the MLB sends over American coaches © Aurelien Breeden 21 to the academies in Toulouse and invitation to the WBC was a godsend, Rouen to help train young French with all expenses paid by the MLB. “It players, and it provides equipment opens up a whole range of networks assistance. for us that we just need to build upon,” The MLB also organizes the Seminet says. European Academy, a yearly elite Today there are no French development program that usually players in the American major leagues, takes place in Italy, where young although in the past some have signed players from around the continent are with MLB minor league affiliates, like selected to train for free with major Joris Bert with the Los Angeles league level coaches. McClellan says it Dodgers or Frédéric Hanvi with the is “heavily scouted,” often by 20 or Minnesota Twins. Both are now back more American clubs. This includes in France. Pitcher Alexandre Roy the eight ones that have full time recently signed a minor league contract scouts in Europe already, like the with the Seattle Mariners. Baltimore Orioles, the Pittsburgh Pirates or the New York Mets. oy used to play for the Rouen McClellan says that when he started R Huskies, who with 9 working on international development championship titles in the past 10 years at the MLB in 2000, there were only are currently France’s strongest club three. and its best showcase in Europe. This is good news for the Xavier Rolland is a French television FFBSC, which says it entertains good journalist who founded the club back relations with baseball leagues in the in 1986 with fellow students and who United States, Japan and elsewhere in has been president since 1997. Rolland the world. For the first time this year, says a long-term strategy based on France took part in the qualification developing young talents has paid off. rounds of the World Baseball Classic “We were ahead of everybody (WBC), an international tournament else, we focused on training over a 10 sanctioned by the International year period and not just for the next Baseball Federation. season,” Rolland says. He is sitting at a France lost to Spain and South picnic table under the food tent at the Africa and did not make it past the Challenge de France, where the Sénart preliminaries. But for the FFBSC, the Templars are crushing the Beaucaire © Aurelien Breeden 22 Knights 16 to 3 in the seventh inning. interest from Japan, and we don’t get a The Huskies are up next. sentence.” “The Italians, the Dutch, they For Rolland, complexity isn’t are professionals, they have stadiums an excuse. “People say ‘We don’t with seating for 20,000, and we beat understand anything!’ We always them,” he says proudly. Rouen is the answer: the Americans understand it,” only French club to have reached the he says jokingly. How hard can it be? Final Four, a post-season tournament between the best four European teams. And a growing international reputation helps attract enough financing from exterior partners like the MLB to cut off from public subsidies. In a way, the Huskies could be the future of French baseball: a strong European team with financial independence and a long-term development strategy that helps export top players abroad. But even Rouen can’t seem to win over the home audience, which is key for baseball to Players from Beaucaire at the Challenge de France food tent. truly blossom in France.

Rolland says the Rouennais are The culture question sympathetic towards the team and appreciate its victories but don’t show ack at the Challenge de France, up at games. He is particularly irritated Bt he five garbage collectors are by the fact that the soccer team in gone but the crowd of spectators has Rouen gets more media attention than swelled to a couple hundred, bringing they do despite poorer results. “When the concentration of French people a soccer player gets a cold, he gets a who actually know what the Red Sox whole page even though he plays in a or Braves logos on their clothes and low division,” he says. “We are at the caps stand for to an unusually high European summit, we are getting threshold. Some of them bask in the

© Aurelien Breeden 23 sun on the bleachers while others bring Peter Marquis, the sociologist, their children to an inflatable batting says the implantation of a sport is a cage or buy them fries and a hotdog – long and complex process, and in a baguette. baseball just might be too atypical to Baseball faces so many export. After all, he says, how can you difficulties in France that many have call it America’s national pastime and their own theory about what element of expect it to grow elsewhere? French culture isn’t compatible with the sport. nd yet, difficultly and According to FFBSC president haltingly, baseball grows in Didier Seminet, “we will never be able Athe hearts and minds of to change French sporting culture, or French children, teenagers and adults, even the European one: it’s a sporting who come from the biggest cities and culture that goes left-right, left-right.” the tiniest villages and who discovered Victor Vitelli, who has worked the sport in too many different ways to extensively on baseball at the count. American consulate in Lyon with Michel Bachelet, 28, is Mark Schapiro, says “there’s a unemployed. He studied engineering distorted image of what you actually and spent six months in Florida on a need to play baseball” because the university exchange program, where French focus too much on fields and he fell in love with the game. When he stadiums that fit international norms. came back to Lyon, he started playing “You just need a place where you can with the Devils. hit a ball,” he adds. After the game in April, on the For Baptiste Fourmaux, the metro ride home, he thinks about what Bron - Saint Priest Devils coach, the it is, exactly, that drew him to baseball. French find baseball too long and slow “It’s a sensation. The ball is going up, because they are used to shorter, it’s right there…” He stops, looks up concentrated games. “In soccer, you and smiles. He says there is nothing arrive at the beginning, everybody like that short adrenalin burst when squeezes in, and when the game is over you face your opponent, an individual everybody leaves and goes home,” he duel frozen in time, unlike the constant says. “Whereas in baseball, people flow of soccer. Bachelet himself seems come and go, it’s more relaxed.” © Aurelien Breeden 24 frozen while the crowd bustles around him. “It’s the pleasure of hitting the ball, of catching the ball.” Several weeks later, a travelling Christian evangelical community trespassed on the Devils’ home field and settled there with cars and trailer homes. The Devils do not know when they will be able to play next.

A lone mascot at the Challenge de France

Top left: Trophies at the FFBSC headquarters in Paris. Top right: Sénart throws out a Beaucaire runner. Bottom left: P.U.C. little leaguers play at Mortemart Stadium. Bottom right: Muddy Devil shoes in Saint Priest.