New Europe

It was dusk in Zurich, the crisp Swiss mountain air tinged with early summer warmth, the sun ducking below the peak to the west, as I leaned back in my plastic patio chair, digesting the barbecue chicken, Haitian curry and potato salad. The apartment complex was buzzing with life, a hive-like structure where every balcony was occupied on a Saturday night too warm to be inside. To my left was my good friend and catcher, Gordon Toussaint, who I was visiting for the weekend. To my right was Mikhail, former linebacker at Central Ohio, player for the Zurich Renegades American football team, currently with aspirations to become the first African-American man to summit Everest. His wife, Yvonne, rose gingerly, plates in right hand, left hand on her swollen belly, nine months down and just days to go. Gordon’s girlfriend Samira stood to help. We were digesting more than chicken. At least I was. After a conversation that jumped from what it was like to be black in Europe these days to Mikhail’s trek through the Nepalese jungles and his six years in the US Army, my mind was working just as hard as my stomach. Gordon, who was French-Haitian, Yvonne (whose family was from Sierra Leone), and Mikhail, had swapped stories about being stopped (“controlled”) by transit cops and customs officials on a daily basis, trying to navigate life in a hostile homeland. Swiss neutrality and protectionism currently manifested as blatant racism. Modern French diversity striking a tense coexistence with French tradition. Tupac played in the background, a proper soundtrack, and the conversation always veered towards sports.

The night before I had stumbled off the TGV from Paris, into Gordon’s car, and off to practice with the Zurich Challengers baseball team. Bases were set up against a corner of a soccer pitch opposite the construction site where their gleaming new field was being built. A batting cage tucked against the edge of the field was the only permanent evidence of a baseball presence. Gordon introduced me to the coach, James, and to the ten or so players assembled. As we stretched and threw, James came up to me and said, “You look really familiar.” I asked him where he was from, and he said San Diego. Then I asked him what school he had gone to, and he told me UC San Diego. I looked at him again. Then it clicked. “You were the closer, right? From Chula Vista?” Yes! It had been six years, but I remembered him. James Sanders. I came so close to going to UCSD, it was a done deal until I chose Wesleyan at the last minute. I had gone down to SD the summer before my senior year of high school for the baseball camp, where he was one of the counselor/coaches. Then they brought me down again for a recruiting trip, and I had hung out with James for much of it. It was interesting to see what the talent was like on a team in Switzerland’s top division, and I realized that while they didn’t have anyone as good as our best players in France, they also didn’t have anyone as bad as our worst. After the practice, as the sky turned metallic gray and the bugs came out, we sat around the clubhouse and drank beers with the team. James and I talked about mutual friends and playing ball internationally. And after I told him my stats so far this season, he tried to recruit me to play for the Challengers next year. We had dispatched Gif and Rouen B handily the past two weekends, and my record had gone to 6-0, with a 0.18 ERA. I was one bunt single away from throwing a perfect game against Rouen B, and had amassed 71 strikeouts in my 38 innings of work this year. We were now 11-1 and sitting atop our pool at the halfway point of the season, and I needed to get out of town to clear my head before the second half. Zurich was the perfect place. While Gordon and Samira were at work, I climbed to the tallest peak in the area, a summit that gave views of snow-capped Alps along the horizon. Then I headed down to the lake for a swim, the glacier runoff that filled Lake Zurich reminding me of Tahoe in the summer, ideal on a day in the high 80’s. Zurich has a reputation for being a sanitized banking town, but in reality the local culture is just as much dominated by hipsters in North Face taking advantage of the outdoor sports opportunities in the area.

Gordon and Samira didn’t fit into either stereotype, being second-generation children of immigrants working white-collar corporate jobs but still facing the racism that is rampant throughout Europe. Western Europe, and France especially, is dealing with an existential identity crisis that is shaking white Europe to its core, what they see as an attack on the oldest of old world whiteness. The African and Caribbean immigrants that came to the country to rebuild in the decades following WWII stayed and started lives and families, and now the younger generation is reaching working age. That, combined with loose immigration laws, has fundamentally altered the landscape. Paris, in places, is now a chocolate city. And this is scaring the crap out of the whites. It’s beautiful karma for colonialism, reparations in the truest sense of the word. Yet the racial tension in France bubbles underneath, unspoken publicly, ignored. A recent call to count blacks in the census was shouted down, and compared with forcing Jews to wear Stars of David on their clothing. France sees itself as an idealized Republic in which race doesn’t exist, where they confuse equality with forced sameness. But pretending that racial differences don’t exist is not the same as accepting all races as equal. It doesn’t benefit the republic to ignore the massive disparities in wealth, health, education and opportunity that exist between whites and blacks. The more France represses these racial tensions, the greater the explosion will be when they rise to the surface. This national psychology is unhealthy, and an open, honest national conversation is the only thing that can help it. But this is impossible as long as Sarkozy is president, the thuggish former interior minister who vowed violence against the black youth rioting in Saint-Denis and the Neuf Trois not long ago.

As is true with every society, this tension is reflected in the country’s sports. That became apparent as I sat back and listened to Mikhail tell the story about why he left the Renegades football team. The head coach, a buddy of his, asked him to follow his motorcycle in the car so he could drop it off at the mechanics. As he pulled up behind the coach’s motorcycle, he did a double take at the guy’s bandana, feeling sick as he recognized the Confederate flag. It is reflected in the racially tinged rivalry between the country’s two preeminent soccer clubs, Olympique Marseille and Paris Saint-Germain, where the Paris fans shout epitaphs at the diverse Marseille squad. It is also reflected in the internal dynamics of my Compiegne baseball team. Started 25 years ago by Jean-Claude, it was a middling franchise in this rich city (nicknamed “the Imperial Town”), until taken over by Luis and infused with new blood. Most of the players from Paris are black, and to be honest, the team wouldn’t be much without them. Everyone gets along great, on the surface, but the white part of the team is undergoing the same identity crisis as the country as a whole. Is “Frenchness” inherently white? Can France retain its unique identity if it isn’t white? How can they reconcile their conception of themselves with the new demographic realities? These are the issues that Gordon is forced to confront on the train to work everyday, that Mikhail has dealt with in the year since he moved to Switzerland from the States. And as the courtyard of Gordon’s apartment complex dipped into darkness as the twilight receded and night took over, I wondered how French sports and society will react in the coming years to being shaded a bit darker as well.

Mars Doin' Work

"[Spike] Lee's Kobe Doin' Work supposes that film tells the truth 24 times a second, the game 12 minutes per quarter, the body every moment of life." - Troy Patterson, Slate

Money it's gotta be the shoes!

Quote of the Day

"Jean-Claude had his petanque balls stolen by the gypsies." -Thomas

Le TAG

C'est fini, mais il a ete spectaculaire. Visitez le site pour video et photographies.

PUC

Once the most dominant club in France, hands down, the Paris University Club (PUC) had fallen on hard times. This year the oldest and most storied franchise dropped from Elite to Nationale 1 for the first time in their history, their ranks depleted and a huge target on their backs. Yet a late inning comeback by GIF was the only stain on their near perfect record, and our matchup with them on the third of May was preceded by playoff-level anticipation. The night before I met a friend at the bar his parents own, Au Cervoisier, a bohemian hangout on the river where repurposed barrels serve as tables and reggae permeates every corner. We talked baseball over Belgian beer, and what a win Sunday would mean to the CBBC lifers. Especially to Coca, who coached PUC for his first seven years in France after moving here from Cuba, before defecting to Compiegne. Made my way over to Thomas and Pascal's flat afterwards to catch a game with them, Coca, and Gordan, the Haitian catcher from Paris who lives in Zurich. Remnants of two bottles of Havana Club and discarded pizza were on the table, Coca was melted into his chair with a big pair of designer shades on. Coca is a master at not expending energy until he absolutely has to, and equally adept and looking like he came straight from the pages of GQ at all possible moments. He arrived at the park Sunday morning in a khaki suit from his summer collection, although it was a bit premature as rain and the temperature fell. Coca will keep the suit on until right before he has to warm up for the game, and put it right back on as soon as the last out is made. He'll stand behind the dugout between innings and smoke cigarettes. He'll lead the team in RBIs all year long, and do whatever it takes to win. Especially against his former team.

I strolled over to the bullpen after warming up in the outfield before the first game. A Spicoli-looking guy was occupying the only mound, so I asked him in French how much longer he had. He was PUC's starting pitcher, and he looked at me and said in English, "No French, don't speak." Turns out that not only was the guy from Merced, he went to Fresno State and played ball there with one of my best friends from high school. So we had a Norcal-Norcal matchup on the hill for the first game. Unfortunately his defense made five errors, and although we both threw complete games it was never close. I ended up throwing a shutout, three hits, one walk, 12 strikeouts, and we won 5-0. PUC bounced back and won the second game, 9-5, giving us our first loss of the season and devastating our guys who had dreams of sweeping Paris. Losses build character though, and it had to happen at some point, so I wasn't particularly fazed. Was also pretty happy about pushing my record to 4-0, with a 0.27 ERA and 51 strikeouts in 26 innings. Coca was similarly unfazed, and he was beaming after our victory, khaki suit only slightly rumpled just as our record is now only slightly tarnished.

Two feasts

(Photo of Paris-based graffiti artist JR and his work courtesy of bluejake.com)

"My new theory [was] that you could omit anything if you knew that you had omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood." -Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Wednesday Paris trips serve two main purposes: a three o'clock baseball practice at Pere Lachaise, across the street from the cemetery, and a trip to Shakespeare & Co. to re-up on books. Spent too much on a couple of Hemingway books this trip, on April 29th, then had a couple hours to kill before practice. Walked along the Seine from the Latin Quarter to the Champs-Elysees and the Tower, stopping for Thai food, then took the train back for practice. Headed back out to Franconville, to Luis's house, for dinner, where Jean-Claude, his wife, and Seb Ferry joined for a big Cuban meal. Black beans and rice, chicken, flan and mojitos. Mucho mojitos. Luis keeps his head shaven to keep from looking his 52 years, but when the gray comes in he starts to look older than the spry third baseman who hit two doubles off the wall against BOE. Tonight, the wrinkles on his face looked more pronounced too as he got drunker and louder, getting in a yelling match with Jean-Claude, worried that our pitching isn't deep enough, after me. He was slouched on the couch, rubbing his belly, Cuban salsa in the background, frowning. He mixed me another mojito, and I raised it, saying, "Tranquilo man! Hasta la victoria, siempre." We clinked glasses and he relaxed a bit. We'll find more pitching options for the playoffs, and they're months away anyway.

Friday was a night for the Venezuela contingent. I went to Luis Aponte's house, also in Margny-Les-Compiegne, for a barbecue and the Cubs-Marlins game. A stack of Toulouse sausages on the grill on a warm night and cold Heineken's. Luis had come from Venezuela three years ago to do what I'm doing now, play for CBBC and live in Apart City. After his second season he got married and moved here permanently. Although he's playing for Bois-Guillaume this year, he and his wife Claire still live in Compiegne. Francisco, a retired Venezuelan catcher who was once on their national team, came by with his daughters and his brother, an assistant coach for the Elite Level team Senart. Omar and his girlfriend dropped by too. Chicago won, and I realized I'm using my Spanish as a crutch that's hurting the effort to learn French. Going to try to switch it up a bit, but it's hard when I'm hanging out with Cubans and Venezuelans all the time.

BOE

(Photo of Paris graffiti from Flickr user Metrix)

On the night of Saturday, April 25th, the Indians of Boe Bon-Encontre boarded a TGV and struck north to take us on at our home field in Compiegne. They're the team within our pool that's farthest from us, trekking up from southern France for double-header beginning early Sunday morning, another rainy affair that signaled that the regular season was in full swing. Thin mist obscured the line between air and grass, blanketing everything as I warmed up in the outfield, eight a.m., watching them take BP, impressed, hopeful that they'd provide more competition than the last two teams. They were undoubtedly better, looking like a solid DIII squad, but we adjusted accordingly and beat them 10-3 and 12-2. I threw the first, a complete game with four hits, one earned run, a walk and 16 strikeouts. Seb and Bob combined to dominate five innings in the second before the mercy rule forced BOE to head to the train station early for a solemn ride back south. We were now in sole possession of first place, sitting at 6-0 after a surprising GIF team upset the mighty PUC (Paris University Club), who was set to come visit us the following Sunday for the biggest matchup yet in the young season.

Second week

(Images of Paris graffiti to accompany select posts)

Sunday April 19 featured a double-header against Thiais, a team in our pool and a town on the Seine, southeast of Paris. Their field was set far back from the road and its boundaries overgrown with greenery. On this foggy, wet spring day it looked like the field had been carved from jungle, with only the roaring TGV tracks beyond the right field fence to remind of civilization's proximity. Took the first game handily, 13-0 when the mercy rule went into effect after the fifth. I threw all five, allowed one hit, one walk and struck out eight. The second game proved tougher, we ended up on top though the score was a more respectable 8-5. Luis was masterful in relief, Coca had clutch RBIs, and I went 4-4 with two doubles, three runs and two RBIs. Spoke with Giordano's father at length between games, very interesting guy. From Wisconsin originally but has been an expat jazz piano player and teacher in Paris for upwards of two decades. Going to catch his next gig in Paris on May 12th.