After the games last night, Aldo and I cooked some pasta and roasted a chicken for dinner before watching a little bit of the Cubs’ late-inning implosion against the Braves. In terms of surreal situations, watching an internet broadcast of a Cubs’ day game at 11pm at night in Bihorel, France with a Frenchman and […]
After the games last night, Aldo and I cooked some pasta and roasted a chicken for dinner before watching a little bit of the Cubs’ late-inning implosion against the Braves. In terms of surreal situations, watching an internet broadcast of a Cubs’ day game at 11pm at night in Bihorel, France with a Frenchman and an Australian certainly ranks right up there. (We’ve been staying at Aldo’s during the Challenge de France, having left Neufchatel for good on Thursday morning.)
When we headed in to Bois-Guillaume this morning, we found a field that looked like it had hosted the Kentucky Derby. It had rained on and off during our games against Savigny and La Guerche on Friday, and it had rained all night as well. Not surprisingly, the field was a swamp, slashed and scarred with enormous cleat marks from the dugout to the outfield fence. Even taking into account the French (and particularly Norman) tendency to play in conditions that you would never play in back home, this was more than a tad ridiculous, and Sylvain (the club president) and Matt (the other coach) and I all agreed that there was no way we could realistically play a game that would be safe for both the players and the field, seeing as we had to host Senart next weekend and then Savigny the weekend following.
There was just one problem, however: It wasn’t our final decision. Technically, the Tres Lettres’ Technical Director had the final call on whether a field was playable, and he was adamant that the game continue as scheduled. All arguments fell on deaf ears. Several times against Savigny and La Guerche, players had slipped awkwardly on the slick infield surface, risking serious injury. In fact, in the first inning, after I had been drilled in the arm and then stolen second, I slipped awkwardly rounding third after a groundball to the shortstop, and barely got back to the bag, crawling on my hands and knees to beat the tag. (Sylvain had been the third base coach, and said that he had to restrain himself from picking me up and tossing me onto the bag like Asterix and Obelix, which is funny because, well, Sylvain is a big dude and kind of looks like Obelix.) Our shortstop, Quentin, had twice slipped and fell ass over teakettle trying to field a ground ball, and our third baseman in the second game had his leg slip out from under him while throwing to first, nearly pulling a muscle.
All of these plays had left their mark on the field, as huge puddles of mud had replaced the grass at shortstop, second base, and first base. With a series of home games coming up and limited resources to repair a field that three days ago had been in its best condition ever, it made absolutely no sense to play a meaningless game (0-2 on Friday, we were already effectively out of the tournament) and screw the field up any more. As bad as the field looked, however, it sounded even worse, by which I mean that anywhere on the field, you could hear the air pockets bubbling to the surface, reminding me of walking through salt marshes on Cape Cod as a kid. Now, I’m not a professional groundskeeper, but my personal rule is that when there’s a quarter-inch of water covering most of left field, and the field is so wet you can hear it, it’s probably not a good idea to play baseball.
Nonetheless, the technical director insisted that the game go on as scheduled. “I don’t care about next week’s games,” he said, “I care only about the tournament, and the game must be played. The field is safe.”
Sylvain, Matt, and I convened briefly, and made the right call. I pulled the coach for Senart aside and told him we would be on the field at 1:30 in full uniform to formally declare a forfeit due to the field’s unplayability. I apologized, but he said not to worry, he felt it was the right decision and that he was sorry it had to come to us forfeiting.
As I walked to the clubhouse to get dressed (a largely symbolic gesture) the head umpire arrived and asked me if I had seen the field. He was a little late to the party, and so when I said I had, he began adamantly arguing that there was absolutely no way to play on the field that day, that he was unwilling to put players in harm’s way, and that he couldn’t imagine playing as scheduled. I told him I agreed entirely, but that we were being forced to play and would instead declare a forfeit.
I knew it was the right decision, for the right reasons, and despite the effort that the entire Bois-Guillaume club had put in to host the tournament, I knew that at the end of the day, it was an easy decision not to jeopardize the health of players from both teams just because someone from the Federation wanted a final score other than 9-0. However, that didn’t make it easy. Even knowing that the field looked like the day after a Grateful Dead concert, even tired and sore and with roughly 2/3 of my body covered in black and blue marks from errant pitches or awkward dives, I still got the same rush of excitement and wonder from pulling on a pair of baseball pants. It’s no doubt a long-ingrained Pavlovian reaction. I start to pull those socks up and my body knows immediately what will soon be expected of it. “Oh, shit, these things again?
However, this was a case of stimulus without response, because even a rush of adrenaline can’t dry up a little slice of the Everglades in Normandy. As we massed in the dugout, the head umpire declared his opinion that the field was unplayable, and the technical director said that he accepted that advice, but that it was the Tres Lettres’ decision, and the games would go on as planned.
“In this case, Bois-Guillaume will declare a forfeit,” I said, and that was that.
It’s disappointing, as I said, because Bois Guillaum went to great lengths to make this tournament come off well, and did a very good job. However, at the end of the day, I am absolutely, 100% comfortable with the decision we made. It just wasn’t even a close call. One of the club officials asked me “How would this have played itself out in the U.S.?” Well, we wouldn’t have played at all on Thursday, Friday, or today, because they would have called off the tournament as early as Monday on account of the forty days and forty nights of rain.
In any case, that’s that. The tournament goes on without us, and our next game will be Sunday at home against Senart. In the mean time, I’m going to find an apartment Monday and I’m going to try to move in on Monday afternoon. It’s just not fair to Aldo to keep putting us up, and I need a quiet place to study over the next week before this “Putain de CFA Examen,” as the French would say.
Yours in Putting Players’ Safety First and Not Making Insane Decisions,
ev
