Baseball on the Beaches of Normandy

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These are some thoughts I was having about baseball in France and in Europe in general. They are not conclusions; they are solely based on my experience thus far (and were evoked by a conversation I had the other day with Jonathan Cutler, my advisor at Wesleyan).

It is apparent that while in Lithuania baseball appears to be on the rise, in France it is certainly in decline in terms of total clubs in the country and involvement of players in the clubs. There seems to be an apathy about the whole thing, like people don’t really care about the game at all. Like you are twisting their arms to come out and play. I don’t want to create something that is not there, but there is certainly some interesting parallels to be drawn.

In Lithuania, democracy is on the rise. Relations with the US are on the rise, are warming up as the cold war has ended, curtain lifted, and as Lithuania and the baltics adjust to post-soviet, European society. The trajectory of baseball in the country is following suit, though sluggish and a bit belatedly (though not so much if we reorient the way in which we measure this). To the contrary, baseball in France seems to be cooling down. I am here in Normandy, a region that has so much history in terms of the second world war and the United States' role in it, (American troops storming the beaches of Normandy), and the rush of American influence and importance in the region after the war. But since then France-US relations have cooled off, most recently in the French not supporting the war in Iraq and our middle east policies in general.

It is that French baseball is following suit. In Pineuilh (south of France) as in Bois-Guillaume, overall interest in baseball is declining; a sort of devolution is taking place where there are less clubs, less players, less funding, less interest. Baseball, while on the surface (in Rouen, Paris, the major clubs) is on the rise, at the voluntary/participatory level it is on the decline. It is in a rocky place. But for me it is unclear which came first, the chicken or the egg: in other words, I am unclear as to the details of why this is the case. It would be interesting to follow this analogy further, to apply it to other countries.

In Israel, for instance, they are establishing a baseball league for the first time in history. They are recruiting American players, jewish players in particular, as well as players within their own country. This is a place where the US has lots of influence, and has for a long time, so in a sense it does not follow the scenario because one would have to ask the question of why only now Israel is creating a professional league. Though what does professional mean? To have the professional league is more of an advanced question. The real question: when did baseball begin in Israel? I imagine it occurred around the same time as the Israeli State was formed. I am realizing that this term ‘professional’ is fairly outdated and irrelevant to the story of baseball in most European countries, except that it demarcates when a country begins increasing investment in attracting foreign players. What is more interesting to me is what is going on at the youth baseball level, adult baseball leagues, and how baseball is being managed on a ‘business’ and community level.

check out the Israel Baseball League website if it is of interest to you.

www.israelbaseballleague.com

and if you want to learn more about my team here, the Woodchucks, do a wikipedia search and you will find some info.

On Saturday morning, we woke to a note from our roommate Olivier that read "have a great day ‘tapeuses de baballes,’" which is in fact nonsense, but is the feminine form of ‘frappeurs de baseball’, or, 'baseball players'. It was a funny play on words, but it reflects the French (and European) notion of what baseball is, atleast for those who know nothing about it. That it is a silly game, with silly rules, and has an element of machismo that ends up reading to outsiders as girlishness (to generalize and oversimplify for a moment).

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Comments

[Margot]

Baseball flag
This morning I was tutoring a high shcool girl from West Africa. SHe was choosing which verb to use in front of different sports: do, go or play. We tripled the number of sports mentioned in the book. I needed to explain cursorily how baseball is played and that it is the so-called national sport of the US. I give info about sport different sports I theoretically play and she guesses the sport. Then we trade roles. After all that I see on her T shirt brown and red bats as stripes and little baseballs as stars in the form of the US flag. She liked the shirt but didn't know what it was about.

[Vilius]

what we wear without knowing it
Margot, That is really interesting. What a loaded t shirt in terms of messages. Baseball shirt in a place that does not play baseball. Interesting. It makes me think of my first baseball practice in Kaunas, Lithuania, where one of the other players showed up wearing a t shirt that said 'Tultex' on it. Tultex is the company started by my grandfather over 50 years ago, a knitting and sweatshirt company that went out of business almost 10 years ago. I was obviously shocked to find someone wearing one of their shirts in Lithuania(when in the US I rarely see them at all anymore). :)