The Desert?
It wasn't that long ago that baseball players in France looked at the months of July and August and sighed. They saw only a desert — weeks of no baseball to play during the best baseball months of the year. "Those are vacation months," French old-timers declared, "Everybody goes away."
No more. The times, they are a'changin'.
First came the Paris Summer Baseball League, the brainchild of Gaetan Alibert, whose job with the Paris police kept him in the city for much of the summer. He knew he was far from being the only one left in the City of Light and that he wasn’t the only one eager to play baseball. Like many a firecracker of an idea, however, his program sputtered at first, then exploded, with the 2017 season so successful that there was talk of adding more teams and playing time for the upcoming season.
Now the "desert" is getting populated with tournaments and summer programs popping up across the country.
Among them is the first annual "Steady Baseball World Series," July 24–29. Its goal is to bring players from all over the world together in teams mixed by nationality and age and provide a cultural experience as well as a baseball one. Games are scheduled to be played in Paris, La Rochelle and Rouen so players — and their friends and families — can absorb a bit of France with their strikes and balls.
The organizer is Eddie Murray, a former UCLA and independent ball player, who has played and coached in France for the last four seasons. He's planning to bring in coaches for each of the teams from the professional ranks. Information is available at www.steadybaseball.com.
For players hoping for the "South of France" experience, there is the "Old Gloves" Tournament set up by the baseball club Les Renards de la Vallee, that is, the Foxes of the Valley, in Sollies-Pont, just a long home-run away from the Mediterranean coast.
This well-established tournament is notable for one other thing: it is the only one in France for "veterans," that is, players who are 35 years old and older. Details are on the club's website: www.lesrenards.fr, and this year's tournament is scheduled for August 25–26. Who could ask for more: baseball, the Cote d'Azur (the French Riviera) and some of the best food and wine in the world.
And if you can't wait for August, the 2018 season of the Paris Summer Baseball League will open in July at Mortemart field in the Bois de Vincennes on the eastern side of Paris. Check Facebook for its schedule. It's open to all comers, all ages, male and female, beginners and veterans.
