Founded in 1913, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, Ranelagh Baseball closed its doors for almost 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 amazing. Where horse races usually take place at full gallop, for the space of an afternoon, we meet athletes in unusual attire.
Cap on the head, bombers for some, while others are equipped with a mesh mask. These athletes are the players of the Ranelagh baseball club come to practice for their exhibition game scheduled for this Sunday at 14:30 against United Kingdom. “We are here mostly to have fun.“, says Bertrand Maire, who voluntarily refounded the club in 2021.
Indeed, the smile and good humor conquer the players when they finally find a piece of grass to throw and hit a few balls. “It’s part of the life of the club, we don’t have our own field, so we look for solutions to continue playing“, Esteban smiles Saint-Guironsone of the team executives. A lack of adequate infrastructure that testifies, according to fans of American ball sport, to a lack of consideration for a club that, however, is 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 French teak and hit ball German was first practiced as an occupation by Civil War soldiers in the 1860s. Then it was structured as a sports discipline in the last decades of the s. XIX century. around the corner 20This one knows a boom in Europe. This rise in popularity pushes two brothers from 16 municipality founded in 1913, the Ranelagh baseball club
“It is the first baseball club to be created in Île-de-France. They founded it with the idea of establishing a symbolic French-American friendship club. This idea was reinforced after the First World War, because many people in France considered that the American model was a model to follow. follow“, dice Bertrand Mayor. Inside the years 1920, many teams are organized in Paris to form Paris Baseball Liga, in which the club participates 16 .
Made up of French and American players, the Ranelagh is paradoxically undermined by the creation of the French Baseball Federation. In its desire to create a French championship, the new body limits the number of foreign players that a team can field. “The club was stopped for this, in the early 1930s, because this measure went against the original intention of the founders.“, Explain Bertrand Mayor, Ranelagh’s starter, new version.
throwing training
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© France 3 Paris Ile-de-France
More than a hundred years after the club was created, the idea of reviving it crossed Bertrand Maire’s mind during the lockdown in 2021. “I wanted to go back to playing baseball, which I’ve been playing since I was a kid. So I launched the idea of founding a club with my friends. baseball “, Launches the former French international. And it is precisely by immersing himself in the archives of his sport that this executive of the INA, the National Audiovisual Institute, discovers the existence of the Ranelagh baseball club
“as a resident of 16 district, I thought it was a good idea to update this historic club“, keeping the team spirit cosmopolitan. “This corresponds to my vision of the sport. We must create a dialogue between countries through performance“.
Charter members then go door-to-door to attract new members. Andy McCoughoriginally from Pennsylvania and from a family of baseball “I really liked the innocence with which we played here. In America everything is based on performance from a young age. In France we seek above all to have fun“, he explains.
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This 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 need to make sure your throwing and hitting technique is buena“, insists one who has practiced the sport since he was four years old.
The United States is also the homeland of Christian Díaz, but born in Moscow and having lived in Panama and the Netherlands. He resumed baseball in Paris after a more than 20-year absence. “I had been shot in the eye during a game.“, remember. 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 immediately joined the others.“.
this team is looking for International has a total of 26 players from 9 different countries!
The catcher is in charge of retrieving the balls.
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© France 3 Paris Ile-de-France
Since 2021, the cosmopolitan team has alternated between training and exhibition matches. “We organize ourselves by bringing the team, there are really no coaches, we refer to Bertrand, because he is the one with 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 one. “Some are comfortable running and dealing with hits, those with a stronger arm is it so pitchers, and the ones with the best reflexes are the receivers“, he continues.
In the future, Bertrand Maire wants to develop the training of young people in his sport, which today has 15,000 members in France. “It is important for us to attract children and young people, to show that baseball can attract people of all ages.“
Another longer-term goal is to host a baseball game during the 2024 Paris Olympics. A way to pay homage to the first organized baseball Olympic game a Pigeons 100 years ago. “the Ranelagh shown against an American team. It would be a good nod to history…”
Beyond the Olympic ambitions, the club now wants to benefit from a license to integrate the competitive circuit and eventually the French championship. “The goal is to restore our sport to one of its original strongholds in France.“, concludes Bertrand Mayor.
This Sunday’s match against the PUC will be followed at the Hippodrome d’Auteuil at 2:30 p.m.
