Bleu, Blanc, Baseball?

by Aurelien Breeden
Aurelien Breeden 1

Pershing Stadium, Bois de Vincennes Five garbage collectors watch a baseball game.

T
the complex

he five garbage collectors seem confused as they walk up to this secluded spot of

unfamiliar crack of a bat connecting with a ball. The smell of hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill wafts through the air as they approach the fence and stop to watch the ball game. One of them is sporting a tribal tattoo on his bicep; another tucks his fluorescent jacket into a pocket, revealing a green hoody with a growling bulldog underneath. Gruff and burly, the five men stand and watch. Ah, you see, after three players are eliminated, they switch. But why was he eliminated?

the Bois de Vincennes, a sprawling public park that borders the eastern edge of Paris. They are here to empty trashcans around as a the sporting Pershing known

Stadium, which includes a race track and a cluster of soccer fields. A group of men nearby are playing boules on a dirt track, and their metal balls fall to the ground with a familiar thud. But in this corner of the compound, the five men are drawn to the much more

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Its because he arrived after the ball. The ball really goes fast No protection. Minutes go by as the five men slowly piece together the rules of this strange game, until one of them wonders aloud where the teams are from. The ones in red? They are from Beaucaire, comes an answer from the other spectators. Ah. And the ones in black? They are from Snart. Oh really? The man in the green hoody pauses. Waitso you mean they are from here? he says. Beaucaire is in the southeast of France, and Snart is a town 25 miles south of Paris. Both teams are here for the Challenge de France, a yearly baseball tournament that brings together the best French teams. We foreigners! thought they were wonder they wear

Baseball,

Softball

and

Cricket

Federation (FFBSC) has a little over 10,000 members and a yearly budget that hovers at 1 million euros, both of which are 200 times less than what the French Soccer Federation has. Even the French Baton Twirling Federation attracts FFBSC. With little to no presence in the French media or sporting culture, players often stumble upon the sport the same way the five garbage collectors did, by accident. Their chances of discovering and loving the sport depend on the fluctuating cycles of Frances love-hate relationship with the United States. In the past, baseballs development in France has often hinged upon events like World War I or Frances NATO exit; today, it is still part of American soft power, deployed by the State Department and Major League Baseball (MLB) alike. Many stay committed once they are pulled in, despite the financial, structural and cultural obstacles that stand in baseballs way. There is a crying lack of fields, money, publicity and professional prospects, but they keep the flame burning. You have to be different to take care of baseball in France, said Didier Seminet, the FFBSC president for the past three 3 more members than the

aseball is a sport so alien to most in France that the very idea of

French baseball players and clubs feels odd. It has one of the oldest and most complex sporting histories in the country, and yet club presidents and federation officials alike feel they spend most of their time convincing people they actually exist. The French

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years. Because of all the constraints it generates and the little visibility it has, its really a calling.

The history of a little known sport

calling

is

how

one

could

describe Jean-Christophe Tins

self-ascribed mission: to uncover the early history of baseball in France and to lay it out for all to see. Tin is a 42year-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

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overwhelming majority of those who work in baseball here. Tall and blond, with a square face and boyish features, Tin fell in love with baseball thanks to one of his uncles, a baseball coach for the French national teams. The uncle came by Tins house one day when he was 16, just before the schools Mardi Gras carnival. I needed a costume and I didnt have anything at all, Tin recalls. He told me Come to my car, Ill give you a uniform, a bat and a glove. I had never touched a glove or a bat, and here I was, disguised as a baseball player. Six months later, Tin and some friends helped create the Snart Templars baseball club, the current runner-up in the French top-tier championship. Last year, frustrated with baseballs lack of visibility, he started a blog called Forgotten history of a little known sport that chronicles the emergence of the game in the late 19
th

Tins combined passion for history and baseball has led him to dig up surprising anecdotes about the sport between the 1880s and the 1930s, when a series of factors did seem to indicate France had such potential. Americans flocked to Paris during the Belle poque, many of them artists who continued to play their national pastime in France. The movement to revive the Olympic games, led by Pierre de Coubertin, and a general consensus that physical exercise was necessary to energize the nation after the 1870 defeat against Prussia also sparked interest in baseball. The triumphs of American sporting legend Jim Thorpe at the 1912 games in Stockholm spiked particular curiosity about the game. He was the prototype of the perfect athlete that the French and the whole sporting community was looking for at the time, a complete athlete, Tin says. And he had played baseball. Suddenly, the French, inspired by Spalding and others, thought: Thats what we need! In 1924, the year the FFBSC was founded, a series of exhibition games in Paris pitting the New York Giants against the Chicago White Sox drew 4,000 spectators, although many of them were probably American 5

and early 20th century. The blogs URL uses a quote by Albert Goodwill Spalding, an American baseball player, manager and entrepreneur who toured the world in 1888 and 1889 to promote the sport and who declared on Jan. 9, 1914 that "The next baseball country will be France.

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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 baseball owners to support the war effort. German U-boats sank it in the Bay of Biscay on July 10, 1917. French military authorities even saw baseball as a possible training regimen for its soldiers. We had just come out of trench warfare, where you needed to be able to run quickly from one trench to another and to lob grenades into other trenches, Tin explains. In the French army, there was a regular grenade throwing contest, where each regiment sent their best thrower. When the Americans arrived, they beat everybody.
Two men socialize at the Challenge de France

ut France did not embrace baseball the way it embraced

other American sports that crossed the Atlantic during the same period. French sociologist Peter Marquis, who teaches American studies at the University of Rouen and who plays baseball himself, has studied the sporting interactions between American soldiers and the French population during World War I. Many of them took place in resting houses 6

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for soldiers set up by a French branch of the YMCA, where Americans introduced sports like volleyball, basketball and baseball to the French. But baseball still didnt spread beyond the confines of the small expatriate or anglophile community. In the years after the war, thousands of French people started playing basketball thanks to patronages, these Christian groups that organized youth activities, Marquis says. Baseball wasnt chosen by this pre-existing network, and its spread became difficult. Another influx of American troops during World War II did nothing to change the situation. I often read about GIs talking about how it was great to play "their" game on French soil, says Josh Chetwynd, a former baseball player, in an email. Chetwynd Europe, authored a Baseball In country-by-country

cars, pin-ups and American movies all fascinated and shaped the personalities of many artists, and still do today, Marquis says. Popular culture like comic books had a strong impact. So why wasnt baseball part of that baggage? French president Charles de Gaulles decision to withdraw France from the North Atlantic Treaty military Organizations integrated

command in 1966 certainly didnt help. We consider that the NATO exit really put us at a disadvantage, because we lost all the Americans who were stationed in France on military bases, says Franois Collet, the head of communications at the FFBSC. In 1967, as the last American troops were leaving France, their colleagues in Germany and Italy maintained a steady presence that would prove valuable decades later when they left fields and a history of playing behind them. Today, there are three times as many baseball players in Germany as there are in France, and Alessandro Liddi recently became the first player born and raised in Italy to play in the American major leagues, with the Seattle Mariners.

exploration of the sport in the Old Continent. I don't blame them. They were homesick...But the attitude, generally speaking, wasn't Lets focus on getting the French to love the game. Even the post-World War II reconstruction craze for all things American did not usher in an era of French baseball. Jazz, rock, chrome

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any French school children still play thque, a centuries-

years under President George W. Bush has helped bring in more players. Baseball is a sport that has always been in the landscape, even if most French people arent aware of it, Tin says. The French public knows what baseball is, they know about the sport. But actually trying to get into the sport and understanding the rules, thats more difficult.

old ball game similar to baseball, which only thickens the mystery as to why baseball didnt catch on. It is unclear whether thque might have evolved into baseball at some point in time. Baseball historian David Block, the author of Baseball Before We Knew It, wrote in a chapter called The Mysterious French Connection that there were too many variations of thque 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 earlier may have and crossed the English Channel or North Sea in centuries 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, Tin says. There are those who like it because they like whats American, and there are those who dont like whats American. He believes the improvement of Franco-American relations since 2008 after the rocky Aurelien Breeden

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 days 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 Lyon.

Baptiste Fourmaux, the Devils coach, of all the fields Ive been to in the region, ours might be the best. Most dont even have a dugout. Soon, though, it could be gone.

Field of dreams?

swear

these

rocks

are

We went to see the mayor to fix up the current field, says Sylviane Garcia, president of the Devils club. She told us very plainly that we couldnt because it isnt land that belongs to Saint Priest but to Lyon, and that it cant be built upon. She told us that eventually, the houses around it are going to choke it off, and we wont be able to play anymore. Problems that all small clubs face managing small budgets, personal 9 juggling conflicting

multiplying.

Mark Schapiro is the American Consul in Lyon, Frances third most populated city and a crossroads between the north and south of France that sits on the Rhne and Sane rivers. He is also a New Yorker and a devout Yankees fan. But on this chilly morning in April, as he rakes the pitchers mound, Schapiro is second baseman for the Devils, a baseball club with 120 members based in the suburbs of Lyon.

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commitments and working with local authorities are multiplied ten-fold for amateur baseball players in France. And the slow creep of neighboring construction projects is one of the biggest issues for the Devils, a club created in 2002 with the merger of the baseball teams from Bron and Saint Priest, both small towns in suburban Lyon. They arent the only ones with neighborhood problems. The fate of the Savigny-sur-Orge baseball club is a cautionary tale for many baseball fans here. Located in the southern suburbs of Paris, the Savigny-sur-Orge Lions are one of Frances best baseball clubs, with five championship titles and a thirty-year-old history. Last year, however, neighbors filed a petition complaining about the dangers of stray balls landing on their property. The town hall promptly enforced a stadium ban for the adult teams, and pending a solution like higher backstop netting, only little leaguers can play. Armand Varnat, the president of the Rhne Alpes baseball league, knows its only a matter of time before a similar fate befalls clubs in his region. We know that eventually Saint Priest is threatened, Meyzieu is threatened, he says at the game.

Varnat is a former hypermarket manager from Agen, a city in the southwest of France that sits squarely in rugby territory. In 1982, his son came back from school with the firm intention of playing baseball after reading about it in class. A year later, with no background in the game whatsoever he played soccer as a semi-pro Varnat founded the Agen Blue Catchers ball club with an entrepreneur who had just come back from Canada. Varnat has short white hair, salt and pepper stubble and steely blue eyes matching his steely resolve, which was put to the test when his son died in a car accident at the age of 25. It was also the time of my life when I was having health problems and I had to stop working, Varnat says as he sits on the bench in the Devils dugout, wearing a Chicago Cubs jacket. He had lots of baseball projects. I took up the torch to honor my sons memory, because I needed to. He has been involved in baseball since then and became president of the Rhne Alpes league in 2009. Much of his work involves promoting and developing baseball in his region. There were eight clubs when he took over the league. Today there are 12, with five more in the 10

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works. In Cruzilles-les-Mpillat, 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.

Next pages: 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.

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he day is not unfolding well for the Devils. They claw their way

various local authorities with the American consulates assistance. Pushing for baseball, Schapiro said, fits very neatly with public diplomacy objectives like promoting American culture and doing youth outreach, but not all local authorities are receptive. Some people get it, and some people dont, he says later at the consulate, a small office in central Lyon that overlooks the Rhne River. And those who do get it dont always have subsidies to spare for baseball, which is heavily dependent on financial help from the state. You build a gymnasium, you can play volleyball, squash, badminton, indoor soccer, basketball, says Collet, the FFBSC head of communications. A city that builds a gymnasium is going to serve 20 different sports associations. A city that builds a baseball field only serves one, often the smallest at that. In a sense, the Devils are lucky. The club that predated the merger was created in 1976 and was able to obtain a field when the mayor, who had friends at the club and had promised to build one, was successfully elected. Saint Priest kept its commitment to baseball, even after that mayor left, Garcia says, who has been club 14

back to an honorable 10-6 loss after conceding five runs in the first inning of their first game, but the second one is starting with a similar slump. Encouragements exhortations to make and decisions,

dammit and to get a move on stream forth from the dugout, where players shelter from the afternoons first drops of rain. There are no fans or spectators, and not just because of the weather. If you had places for them to sit, you might get 100 to 150 people, based on families and friends, Schapiro says. On a nice day, we get 15 to 20 people showing up. Right now, Armand Varnats major project is the Trfle French for clover. He reaches into his backpack and pulls out a file with Lets Go Rhne Alpes! written on the cover and a picture of four baseball fields arranged like a four-leaved clover. The Trfle baseball complex would include locker rooms, four fields with synthetic grass and seating for 500 on one of them. The estimated price tag is 5 to 6 million euros, but the baseball federations real issue is finding the 50,000 square meters of land it needs to build the facility.

Varnat has been pitching the project to president for the past nine years. Aurelien Breeden

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 clubs worries arent. There are still no showers or locker rooms. Trespassers regularly come for barbecues or quad bike rodeos over the pitchers mound. The field has a locked entrance on one side but is still accessible from the other because the door there was stolen twice. missing. Baseball bats have gone
The Devils dugout.

he afternoon ends with a second defeat (14-8) and muddy shoes.

Richard Duregne, a towering 32-yearold with the number 77 on his back and a cigarette in his hand, says family and friends arent really involved in his baseball life, which started when a friend of a friend brought him to a game in Toulouse. Its 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

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sport. He learned the rules playing video games. He used to read Strike Out, a French baseball magazine that no longer exists. He loves Japanese baseball manga like Rookies or Major, which, with the Nintendo Wii, are some of the more unconventional ways French children discover the game. People dont have negative preconceptions of baseball, he says. Its more like: No shit, it exists in France? Duregne is particularly disappointed that 42, the recent Jackie Robinson biopic, was not released in France. Warner Brothers probably reckoned that the subtleties of stealing bases one of Robinsons specialties would be lost upon a French audience. But if Hollywood cant be trusted to convert France to baseball, who can?

ball and a glove to try it out with his son. They even went to see a Giants game. It was a vacation gimmick, Carbonne said. But when they got back to France, his son wanted more and asked if he could play in Paris. To Carbonnes great surprise, it turned out he could. He signed his son up with the Paris University Club, or P.U.C., which has one of the oldest baseball sections in the country. daughter followed. If you want your kid to play, youve got to follow them, youve got to get involved, Carbonne says at the Mortemart Stadium, a small field also located in the Bois de Vincennes where the P.U.C. little leaguers were playing on a March weekend. Now, Carbonne says, We are hooked. Behind him, for lack of a real organ, a small group of parents launches into the baseball charge theme to encourage their children in the biting cold. Getting them while they are young is an essential strategy for baseball authorities in France. The key for our federation is youth, says Didier Seminet, the FFBSC president, a bald man with square glasses and a soul patch who used to play and manage for Snart. Not only do Soon his

Youth and international development

hen Frdric Carbonne, 47, was on vacation with his

family a few years ago in San Francisco, his seven-year-old son saw an on-going baseball game in a public park. Out of curiosity more than conviction, Carbonne bought a bat, a

enthusiastic children help get parents Aurelien Breeden 16

involved, they are the only way to ensure the number of players continues to grow. Paradoxically, being one of Frances oldest team sports without anybody noticing actually helps. Because it never broke through, people in France see it as an innovative discipline, Seminet says. To help introduce baseball in schools, the FFBSC recently signed agreements with the Primary Education Sporting Union, an organization that promotes sports in schools. France even has two baseball training academies for high-school level players in Rouen and Toulouse, which recently received $100,000 from the Baseball Tomorrow Fund, a grant program young managed players says is by the fairly MLB. well French expertise in the training of recognized, Jean-Christophe

expensive than in the United States and that sport. Because baseball clubs arent evenly spread out over France, finding someone to play against can involve quite a road trip. When you are 16 and you have to cover approximately 100 kilometers at minimum to play a game, you really have to be into it, Seminet says. These difficulties mean the FFBSC has a high turnover. We lose approximately 33% of our members every year, which means that we have a problem keeping them, Seminet says. But we gain 35%. Thats just enough to sustain a small growth rate, but still not enough to reach 13,000 members, the federations peak in the early 1990s. Foreigners from countries with baseball cultures also help bring in more members. The little leaguers playing at Mortemart Stadium have recently been joined by a group of Japanese children. At the Challenge de France, Latin pop blares from the loudspeakers during breaks, a testament to the strong presence of Latin American expatriates in French baseball. 17 longer school days arent conducive to spending more time at a

Tin, the baseball historian. But baseballs small size and lack of visibility still hamper its development, mainly because it isnt the easiest extra-curricular activity to chose for your child. Edith Back is an American mother from Mississippi with two 15 and 12-year-old boys who also play baseball at the P.U.C. She says baseball equipment is more

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Source: FFBSC

But

the

lack

of

adequate

infrastructure and the small pool of members create a vicious circle. Clubs need operational facilities and
Next pages: Left: A boy hangs on to the Pershing Stadium fence during the Challenge de France. Right: Children play in the inflatable batting cage at the Challenge de France.

sufficient staff to attract new members, but they cant get more subsidies or find skilled coaches willing to volunteer until they get new members. Even those who make it into the best clubs have little to look forward to if they want to pursue a 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 dont have the draft.

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either

do at

they different

have

the

He says state help dropped from 850,000 euros in 2008 to 450,000 euros today. And its tumbling down because we are in a context of crisis and austerity. There is hope that the IOC might vote to reinstate baseball and softball this September after it dropped wrestling earlier this year. Wrestling is trying to reclaim its spot for the 2020 games, and baseball is not the only one vying to replace it: climbing, squash, karate, wakeboarding, wushu and roller sports are also contenders.

Olympics. Baseball was played Olympic

sporadically

games starting in 1904 and became an official sport for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Olympic but the International (IOC) voted Committee

baseball and softball out in 2005. This barred the sports from the 2008 and 2012 games in Beijing and London, with dire consequences for the FFBSC. Unlike baseball leagues in the United States or in Japan, the FFBSC is in a public-private partnership with the French state whereby the Ministry of Sports gives the federation money to organize and run baseball. Government subsidies make up roughly half of the FFBSCs 1 million euro annual budget. The other half is brought in through member licensing fees, tournament entry fees and other external sources of income. But Olympic sports get more money than regular ones. When the IOC dropped baseball and softball in 2005 the first time a sport was eliminated since polo was in 1936 the FFBSC felt the pinch. We gradually lost nearly half of our subsidies, says Collet, the federations head of communications.

espite this Olympian setback, there are tentative signs that baseball is becoming

French

increasingly visible in the world, starting with the MLB, which has an office in London. We absolutely do believe there is potential in Europe, says Mike McClellan, director of international game development in New York for the MLB. Down the road there is a business return, but its in the big picture, he says, whether for recruiting talents or getting Europeans to watch televised baseball. According to McClellan, MLB interest in developing European 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 Rouen to help train young French players, and it provides equipment assistance. The MLB also organizes the European Academy, a yearly elite development program that usually takes place in Italy, where young players from around the continent are selected to train for free with major league level coaches. McClellan says it is heavily scouted, often by 20 or more American clubs. This includes the eight ones that have full time scouts in Europe already, like the Baltimore Orioles, the Pittsburgh Pirates or the New York Mets. McClellan says that when he started working on international development at the MLB in 2000, there were only three. This is good news for the FFBSC, which says it entertains good relations with baseball leagues in the United States, Japan and elsewhere in the world. For the first time this year, France took part in the qualification rounds of the World Baseball Classic (WBC), an international tournament sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation. France lost to Spain and South Africa and did not make it past the

invitation to the WBC was a godsend, with all expenses paid by the MLB. It opens up a whole range of networks for us that we just need to build upon, Seminet says. Today there are no French players in the American major leagues, although in the past some have signed with MLB minor league affiliates, like Joris Bert with the Los Angeles Dodgers or Frdric Hanvi with the Minnesota Twins. Both are now back in France. Pitcher Alexandre Roy recently signed a minor league contract with the Seattle Mariners.

oy used to play for the Rouen Huskies, who with 9

championship titles in the past 10 years are currently Frances strongest club and its best showcase in Europe. Xavier Rolland is a French television journalist who founded the club back in 1986 with fellow students and who has been president since 1997. Rolland says a long-term strategy based on developing young talents has paid off. We were ahead of everybody else, we focused on training over a 10 year period and not just for the next season, Rolland says. He is sitting at a picnic table under the food tent at the Challenge de France, where the Snart

preliminaries. But for the FFBSC, the Templars are crushing the Beaucaire Aurelien Breeden 22

Knights 16 to 3 in the seventh inning. The Huskies are up next. The Italians, the Dutch, they are professionals, they have stadiums with seating for 20,000, and we beat them, he says proudly. Rouen is the only French club to have reached the 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 and with a financial long-term independence

interest from Japan, and we dont get a sentence. For Rolland, complexity isnt an excuse. People say We dont understand anything! We always answer: the Americans understand it, he says jokingly. How hard can it be?

development strategy that helps export top players abroad. But even Rouen cant seem to win over the home audience, which is key for baseball to truly blossom in France. Rolland says the Rouennais are sympathetic towards the team and appreciate its victories but dont show up at games. He is particularly irritated by the fact that the soccer team in Rouen gets more media attention than they do despite poorer results. When a soccer player gets a cold, he gets a whole page even though he plays in a low division, he says. We are at the European summit, we are getting
Players from Beaucaire at the Challenge de France food tent.

The culture question

ack at the Challenge de France, the five garbage collectors are

gone but the crowd of spectators has swelled to a couple hundred, bringing the concentration of French people who actually know what the Red Sox or Braves logos on their clothes and caps stand for to an unusually high threshold. Some of them bask in the 23

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sun on the bleachers while others bring their children to an inflatable batting cage or buy them fries and a hotdog in a baguette. Baseball faces so many difficulties in France that many have their own theory about what element of French culture isnt compatible with the sport. According to FFBSC president Didier Seminet, we will never be able to change French sporting culture, or even the European one: its a sporting culture that goes left-right, left-right. Victor Vitelli, who has worked extensively Mark on baseball says at the a American consulate in Lyon with Schapiro, theres distorted image of what you actually need to play baseball because the French focus too much on fields and stadiums that fit international norms. You just need a place where you can hit a ball, he adds. For Baptiste Fourmaux, the Bron - Saint Priest Devils coach, the French find baseball too long and slow because they are used to shorter, concentrated games. In soccer, you arrive at the beginning, everybody squeezes in, and when the game is over everybody leaves and goes home, he says. Whereas in baseball, people long

Peter Marquis, the sociologist, says the implantation of a sport is a and complex process, and baseball just might be too atypical to export. After all, he says, how can you call it Americas national pastime and expect it to grow elsewhere?

A
count.

nd

yet,

difficultly

and

haltingly, baseball grows in the hearts and minds of

French children, teenagers and adults, who come from the biggest cities and the tiniest villages and who discovered the sport in too many different ways to Michel Bachelet, 28, is

unemployed. He studied engineering and spent six months in Florida on a university exchange program, where he fell in love with the game. When he came back to Lyon, he started playing with the Devils. After the game in April, on the metro ride home, he thinks about what it is, exactly, that drew him to baseball. Its a sensation. The ball is going up, its right there He stops, looks up and smiles. He says there is nothing like that short adrenalin burst when you face your opponent, an individual duel frozen in time, unlike the constant flow of soccer. Bachelet himself seems 24

come and go, its more relaxed. Aurelien Breeden

frozen while the crowd bustles around him. Its the pleasure of hitting the ball, of catching the ball. Several travelling weeks later, a 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

Next pages: Top left: Trophies at the FFBSC

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

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