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 teams began sprouting up all over France. High schools sported teams, and so, too, did the venerable athletic associations of the country like the Racing Club de France which hosted games every Sunday.

Watching developments from afar, A.G. Spalding declared,“The next baseball country will be France.” The American media agreed. “Baseball Takes Hold in France!” declared the Pittsburgh Press. “France Looney Over Baseball” read another headline.

By 1913 there was already at least one Frenchman playing professional baseball in America. He was Edouard Gagnier; his teammates unsurprisingly called him “Frenchy.” He played for the Brooklyn Tip-Tops, a team in the old Federal League, and managed a batting average of .250. He might have done better if he’d had his daily baguette. His team, however, was sponsored by the Tip-Top Bread Company, and with pay for players extremely low, they pretty much lived on the sponsor’s product.

So bright did things in France look that balloonist and businessman Emile Dubonnet, during a visit to New York, told a press conference, “The French are an excitable people and baseball will appeal to them. In fact, I believe it will be even more popular in France than it is here.” Billing himself as “the Christopher Columbus of Baseball,” Dubonnet said his country “needed” baseball and that “I want to make it our national game.”

The summer of 1914 marked a high point in French baseball with teams sent to tournaments in Spain and Great Britain while, in the U.S., New York Giants manager John McGraw and White Sox owner Charlie Comiskey announced a series of exhibitions in France as part of another world tour to commemorate the one Spalding staged twenty-five years earlier.

The first two games of the tour took place in Nice on the Riviera. In Paris, however, McGraw and Comiskey faced something they never expected — an unwritten French rule which states that there is no such thing as a rainout. Thousands of spectators had already taken their seats for the first game when the heavens opened up. When officials announced the contest was being cancelled, many were perplexed. Then they became upset. “So what if it’s raining,” one sportswriter complained. “What’s the problem? Soccer players play in the rain, rugby players play in the rain; why can’t baseball players? Are they trying to mock us? They should show us more respect!”

Unfortunately, the rains continued for four straight days, resulting in cancellation of all the games that had been scheduled. In spite of the rainouts, however, there was little question America’s national pastime had captured the imagination of the French public. “Absoluement,” declared one optimistic Frenchman who then added, “Nothing short of a catastrophe can thwart the development of baseball in France.”

Unfortunately, catastrophe is exactly what happened.