Today’s French Baseball
Up and down, up again and down. That pretty much tells the story of French baseball. Today it seems to be edging up, albeit slowly. There are about 13,000 players, about a thousand added each year, and there are teams all over the country, but none of them are professional.
So what’s keeping this country with its long and colorful baseball history from producing big name players and successful international teams just as A.G. Spalding predicted? The answer is: a whole bunch of things.
A few Frenchmen are valiantly struggling in the American Minor Leagues, but there has been no big breakthrough. No big star like basketball players like the Frenchmen Tony Parker and Joaquin Noah who romp in the NBA, which means no celebrity-fueled inspiration for young players.
Facilities are another problem. It takes a lot of land to create a baseball diamond, and it’s an expensive proposition for space that will essentially have only one use. It’s easy to put a track around a soccer field, and that field can be used for all sorts of athletic events and even turned into a rugby pitch in a pinch. A basketball court can be used for a whole variety of activities, like badminton and handball, but a baseball diamond? Well, just try to think of another use.
Complicating the space issue is the fact that nearly all the athletic grounds in France are owned by the municipalities and they are reluctant to parcel out their land for what is considered a minor sport at best.
Then there is the French psyche which believes that July and August are vacation months, time to head to the beach or the mountains or to Grandma’s country house. No time for baseball.
As a result the baseball season gets chopped in two, beginning in mid-March, taking a siesta through the warm days of summer, and waking up again in September for two months. In the northern half of the country, people are still shivering in March and getting drenched in April. October, too, can be an uncertain weather month. The teams in the south of France are luckier weather-wise, but they still take July and August off. In other words, during the very best weather of the year, nobody is playing baseball.
So, is there any hope for French baseball? Absolutely, says Didier Simonet, president of the French Federation of Baseball, Softball and Cricket (FFBSC). France, he points out, is now regularly invited to the World Baseball Classic Qualifier, and sends its best young players to Major League Baseball camps in Europe and the US. MLB has try-out sessions in this country and has helped in the development of some fields. Still, as Simonet says, “You have to be committed to take care of baseball in France. It is really a calling.”
