It was kind of a tough weekend in HBWT land. We dropped two to PUC, two, ahem, spirited games. Frankly, I was shocked that those guys had yet to win a game. They played reasonably solid defense, and had a decent lineup, with power in the 1-6 spots. We should have won them both, and […]
It was kind of a tough weekend in HBWT land. We dropped two to PUC, two, ahem, spirited games. Frankly, I was shocked that those guys had yet to win a game. They played reasonably solid defense, and had a decent lineup, with power in the 1-6 spots. We should have won them both, and instead we lost them both, and the agonies of recalling what might have been have made it painful to type up a summary. I’ll get over it by tomorrow, and the catharsis will hopefully help me get a post up by Thursday or so. In the meantime, I’ll post a few pictures of the Bois-Guillaume home field.
There’s a nice clubhouse just outside the field, which is part of a larger athletic facility for the town’s other clubs.
Here you can see the right field fence:
And here you get a good luck at the unique square infield. Financial constraints forced the town to reduce the square footage of the dirt pattern on the infield, so instead of the typical gentle arc from first to third, it’s perfectly squared off, with dirt only on the actual basepaths. Needless to say, I had never seen anything like this before I came to France. It’s a very slow infield, and it plays even slower when the frequent Normandy rain leaves it wet on Sunday mornings; basically, you have to charge just about everything. The square basepaths result in not one but two “lips” (where the grass meets the dirt), so funny hops abound, although I feel that some of our players doth protest too much in that respect. For the most part, it’s a good infield, with the best, most comfortable (and highest- think St. Louis, 1967) mound I’ve seen in France.
As you can see, there’s a lot of foul territory, and it cost us on Sunday. It’s sort of like Oakland in that respect, with the primary difference being a general absence of pipe-fitters and welders wearing silver and black ready to throw down because someone wore a Mariner’s jersey into the upper deck.
More on Sunday’s tragedies later this week…
