Making Spalding Proud
110 years ago, in 1914, A. G. Spalding predicted, "The next great baseball country will be France.”
After more than a century of set-backs endured by the game here — World War I, World War II and the explusion of US troops when France left NATO — Spalding may about to be proved right. The Federation Francaise de Baseball et Softball and the Val d'Europe have just signed an agreement to build a massive national baseball and softball center. This complex of playing fields and training centers, the first of its kind in this country, will be located near Disneyland Paris. Plans call for the construction of a stadium to host international and national competitions as well as training facilities for the most talented players.
One of the most important goals is to bring Major League Baseball games to France, something that hasn't happened since 1924 when the Chicago White Sox squared off against the New York Giants in an exhibition in Nice.
One French newspaper remarked at the time that the Giants were not giants at all, just regular-sized men.
Giving the project an enormous boost is the return of baseball and softball to the summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2020. Paris is a candidate to host the 2024 Games which would mark the centenary of those Paris games immortalized in the film "Chariots of Fire."
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will not decide whether to award the games to Paris or to its rival Los Angeles until September, but the public relations push to show the support of the city and national government, as well as that of the citizens, is well underway. French President Emmanuel Macron has gone so far as to join in tennis matches and other sports competitions to demonstrate his backing of Paris's candidacy.
He has yet to try his hand at baseball and softball, at least as far as we know.
The IOC is hedging its bets, saying it will award the 2024 games to one of the candidates and the 2028 games to the other. Paris, of course, is desperately hoping for the 2024 games and the anniversary celebrations that would go along with them.
The French baseball federation is fully behind that effort as part of its "Ambition 2024" project spearheaded by Didier Seminet, the federation's president.
He would undoubtedly be quick to point out that there was baseball in the 1924 games, albeit as a demonstration sport,
and that the new stadium would not be far from where the earlier games were played on the east side of the city.
The site for the new complex was chosen to take advantage of the infrastructure generated by Disneyland Paris and a second theme park built in the area, as well as the rail station for France's bullet train and other mass transport planned to shuttle visitors from the center of Paris to Olympic venues.
Perhaps the next step, however, should be to get President Macron a whiffle ball set and a little coaching by the French-born Bruce Bochy of the San Francisco Giants (also a regular-sized human, not a giant) so he could become familiar with "le baseball" in time to throw out the first pitch of the Olympics.
Macron says he likes to play to win, so there should be no problem securing the 2024 Games for Paris and, at the same time, proving Spalding was right: France can be a great baseball country.
