Baseball and the Eiffel Tower

French Baseball History Part 3

Mash together a celebrity, a businessman and a promoter with an eye to the main chance and what do you get?

There’s Baseball in France?

French Baseball History Part 1

Yes, Virginia and everyone else, there really is baseball in France. And it’s been in this country for more than a century, almost from the beginning of the organized game. Surprisingly, it owes its…

Rainy Day in Normandy

Comets Story 2

Let us backtrack for a moment and tell you how it really began.

Although the calendar said “spring,” we were wet and cold, shivering in front of a roaring fire. For three days we had been drenched by what the locals…

Mercenaries

They come in all shapes and sizes.

There’s Will Musson, a broad-shouldered bruiser from Connecticut who refers to himself as Big Willy Moose, stands around 6’4” and nearly took out a chain link fence while chasing a foul ball near third base.

Weathering It

Comets Story 6

I was pumped up. My first game in forty six years was just two days away and I was bursting with excitement.

Axel had called everyone together for a meeting but it was clear my teammates were less than thrilled. “Ces gars sont…

Star of David Glove

One of the nicest things about living in France is the regular cycle of brocantes. Brocantes are a combination flea market and antique fair that crop up throughout the country. They can be big or small and can draw dealers who handle everything from soup terrines to nutcrackers. One thing you…

Artists of the Diamond

French Baseball History Part 2

It was not exactly the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry, but it was fierce: the competition between the baseball-playing artists of Pont-Aven and their counterparts in Concarneau. The two picturesque coastal towns of…

French Baseball Takes Off

French Baseball History Part 4

A.G. Spalding’s big bet at the base of the Eiffel Tower - that is, his staging the first professional baseball game in France during the Universal Exposition of 1889 — paid off. A single game by the pros and…

Meeting the Comets

Comets Story 4

My first practice with the Honfleur Comets, the team Axel Schuster coached, was like entering a parallel universe: everything was the same, yet it wasn’t. It was soccer shoes, not baseball spikes, making the familiar click-clack as the players…

The Beginning

Comets Story 1

It was a dark and stormy day — really! — that drove Don back to baseball. He’d been on a 45-year coffee break from the game and we were holed up in our house in Normandy freezing and watching the torrents of rain. “It’s supposed to be spring,” Don…