In about 18 hours I’ll hop on my last flight to France for my last two games with the Woodchucks. There’s a nice symmetry to it all, as my last games in France will be against Antoni Piquet and La Guerche, the same guys I first saw with the Lions on Opening Day way back […]
In about 18 hours I’ll hop on my last flight to France for my last two games with the Woodchucks. There’s a nice symmetry to it all, as my last games in France will be against Antoni Piquet and La Guerche, the same guys I first saw with the Lions on Opening Day way back in late March. Needless to say, there are a flood of emotions that come to mind: sadness and nostalgia, certainly, but also relief, joy, and satisfaction. At the end of the day, Have Bat Will Travel was about making something happen, about overcoming the inertia the world puts on us and on our often unrealistic dreams.
And it happened. Above all, it happened, the real and the surreal blending for seven unforgettable months that were at times frustrating, often challenging, always interesting. Come Monday, as I hop on that last flight home from CDG, it will be time to turn out the lights. The party’s over.
In terms of this blog, I’ll keep posting for at least a few weeks afterwards. There are a lot of stories I haven’t had the opportunity to tell on here, stories that I want to get around to telling. The past few weeks in particular have had more than their share of the ridiculous, the bizarre, and the silly, and it would be a shame not to share them.
One bit I can share, however, is that apparently some of the fellas at Rouen took issue with my post about the organization’s tendency to hoard ballplayers. I was told that the team’s forum erupted in a frenzied backlash of counter-allegations, criticisms, and ad hominem personal attacks. Now, I haven’t read it- I learned long ago that there’s no sense in getting my Irish up over something so trivial- but I was told that the arguments focused on two main lines of reasoning.
First, it was argued that I had somehow been “brain-washed” by the people at Bois-Guillaume. Now, this would be hilarious but instead is the only one that bothers me. Funny, because regardless of my ability to hit a slider or turn a double play, I would like to think that after two degrees from Stanford- one in organizational behavior- and my enrollment in a JD/MBA program, my ability to think critically (particularly about, for example, how organizations behave) is fairly well established at this point. Bothersome, however, because it means that someone found a way to make “me telling my friends back home my take on what I’ve seen while abroad” somehow reflect poorly on the great friends I’ve made in France. Simply put, that’s bullshit. Whatever my opinion of the player aggregation trend in French baseball- and for my part, I’d argue that you’d have to be in a particularly acute form of denial to argue otherwise- it’s my opinion, and that’s all it ever will be.
The second line of reasoning was apparently a more visceral reaction centering on my abilities (or lack thereof) as a ballplayer, the argument being that unless you throw in the mid 90s, your opinion on trends within French baseball lacks relevance. First off, anyone who thinks that a few critical posts on a bulletin board from some French ballplayers with their panties in a twist would hurt my feelings clearly hasn’t been reading very this blog very closely. The toughest critic of my baseball playing ability has always been the guy writing this blog, and after over 20 years of playing ball, I’m pretty comfortable with where that puts me. In the elite level in France, ain’t none of us goin’ to no Big Leagues, so once you get past that, it’s just about playing the game right and having a good time, and I’m comfortable that I’ve done both. However, I’m more interested in the logic that leads to a minimum talent level required for expressing the most obvious observations about the league and what happens within it. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, you don’t need Roger Bresnahan to know which way the wind blows…
So enough of that silliness. Like everything on this blog, it doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, provided there isn’t a group of French ballplayers in ski masks waiting for me when I get off the train in Rouen on Saturday. Failing that, I guess I’ll just reiterate that I liked almost everyone I met from Rouen- indeed, in France- I just disagreed with some of the things Rouen did at an organizational level, and leave it at that.
So on to the weekend, then. As I said, this blog will continue for a few weeks, I think, wrap up a few stories. While I won’t be able to crank out all the little tidbits and sidelights I wanted to, I’m optimistic that I’ll somehow get to circulate them all at some point, in one format or another. Hugs and Handpounds,
-ev