Founded in 1913, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, Ranelagh Baseball closed its doors for nearly 100 years. Since 2021, a group of volunteers has been trying to rekindle the flame of what was the first Ile-de-France baseball team. Meeting with a group of enthusiasts.
Hippodrome d’Auteuil, the scene is surprising. Where horse races are usually held at full gallop, for the space of an afternoon, we come across athletes in unusual attire.
Cap on the head, bombers for some, while others are equipped with a mask with a grid. Ces sportsmen, they are the players of the Ranelagh Baseball Club. They come to practice for their exhibition match scheduled for this Sunday at 14h30 against the PUC. “We are here above all to have fun“, notes Bertrand Maire who refounded the club on a voluntary basis in 2021.
Indeed, smiles and good humor win over the players when they finally find a square of lawn to throw and hit a few balls. “It’s part of the life of the club, we don’t have our own pitch, so we find solutions to continue playing“, smiles Stephen Saint-Guironsone of the team’s executives. A lack of suitable infrastructure which testifies, according to fans of American ball sport, to a lack of consideration for a club that is nevertheless a century old.
It was with the arrival of the first Americans in France at the time of the industrial revolution that baseball was exported to France. This bat and ball sport inspired by the French theca and the volleyball German was first practiced as an occupation by Civil War soldiers in the 1860s. It then structured itself as a sporting discipline in the last decades of the XIXth century. At the turn of 20ththe one knows a boom in Europe. This surge in popularity pushes two brothers from 16th borough to be founded in 1913, the Ranelagh Baseball Club.
“It is the first baseball club that was created in Île-de-France. They founded it with the idea of establishing a symbolic club of Franco-American friendship. This idea was reinforced after the First World War, because many people in France considered that the American model was a model to follow“, says Bertrand Mayor. In years 1920, many teams are organized in Paris to form Paris Baseball League, in which the club takes part 16th .
Composed of French and American players, the Ranelagh is paradoxically undermined by the creation of the French Federation of Baseball. In its desire to create a French championship, the new body limits the number of foreign players that a team can field. “The club stopped because of this, in the early 1930s, because this measure went against the original intention of the founders.“, Explain Bertrand Mayor, the initiator of Ranelagh, new version.
More than a hundred years after the creation of the club, the idea of bringing it back to life crossed the mind of Bertrand Maire during confinement in 2021. “I wanted to play baseball again, which I have been playing since I was a child. So I launched the idea of founding a club with my friends baseballers “, launches the former French international. And it is precisely by immersing himself in the archives of his sport, that this executive of the INA, National Audiovisual Institute, discovers the existence of the Ranelagh Baseball Club.
“As a resident of 16th district, I thought it was a good idea to bring this historic club up to date“, keeping the spirit of a team cosmopolitan. “This corresponds to my vision of the sport. We must create a dialogue between countries through performance“.
The founding members then go door-to-door to attract new members. Andy Mccoughoriginally from Pennsylvania and from a family of baseballers “I really liked the innocence with which we play here. In the United States, everything is based on performance from an early age. In France, we seek above all to have fun“, he explains.
This one notes another difference with the game in the USA. “Here, we focus on the fundamentals. Which is important, because before you want to score points, you have to make sure that your throwing and hitting technique is good“, insists one who has practiced the sport since the age of four.
The United States is also the homeland of Christian Diaz, yet born in Moscow and having lived in Panama and the Netherlands. He resumed baseball in Paris after more than 20 years of absence. “I had been shot in the eye during a game“, he recalls. He discovers the Ranelagh Baseball Club through a neighbor. “I never would have thought that we played baseball in Paris, but I decided to go to practice, and I hooked up with the others right away.“.
This team looking internationale has a total of 26 players from 9 different countries!
Since 2021, the cosmopolitan team has alternated training and exhibition matches. “We organize ourselves by bringing the equipment, there are not really any coaches, we refer to Bertrand, because he is the one who has the most experience“, indicates Christophe Leclercq who joined the Parisian club in March 2021. The positions on the ground are defined according to the specificities of each. “Some are comfortable running and dealing with hitting, those with a stronger arm are launchers, and those who have the best reflexes are the catchers“, he continues.
In the future, Bertrand Maire wishes to develop training for young people in his sport, which today has 15,000 members in France. “It’s important for us to attract children and teenagers, in order to show that baseball can attract people of all ages.“
Another longer-term objective is to organize a baseball match during the Paris 2024 Olympics. A way to pay homage to the first Olympic baseball game organized at Doves 100 years ago. “The Ranelagh demonstrated against an American team. It would be a nice nod to history…”
Beyond the Olympic ambitions, the club now wishes to benefit from a license to integrate the competitive circuit and eventually the French championship. “The objective is to reestablish our sport in one of its original strongholds in France“, concludes Bertrand Mayor.
This Sunday’s match against the PUC is to be followed at the Hippodrome d’Auteuil at 2:30 p.m.
