20 October 2004
8:57 p.m. Paris time
Dreux Gare (Dreux train station)

I am embarking on quite a folly, I fear. I am pulling out of the station in the little city of Dreux in which I live and teach on the last train to Paris, the fast and comfortable Basse-Normandie regional train. The reason for my travel is what makes me feel a little weird. Yesterday morning, I went online on the pitifully outdated computer I have access to at Lycée Edouard Branly, where I teach, and after several minutes of waiting for ESPN.com to load, I found that David Ortiz had capped a thrilling ALCS Game 5 with a hit that put the Red Sox through to Game 6, down 3-2. Having feared a sweep at the hands of the dreaded Yankees when the team went down 3-0, I felt a sudden wave of excitement. Could the Red Sox, who had suffered so long against the Evil Empire, finally beat them while at the same time becoming the only team to ever overcome a 3-0 deficit? The potential ecstasy of Red Sox nation was infinite in this situation. I decided that, if the Sox tied the series last night and forced a decisive Game 7, I would find a way to watch the game, somehow, somewhere.

And so when I found myself staring at another tale of Red Sox heroism on the same computer this morning, this time telling the story of how Schilling rose from the dead with his body sewn together à la Frankenstein and shut down the Yankees offense to win the game for Boston, my mission was clear. It didn’t matter that tonight’s game would not start until 2 a.m. local time. It didn’t matter that I have a cold and am desperately in need of copious amounts of sleep. It didn’t matter that I have no TV, don’t know if any channel is showing the game here, or that the latest any bar stays open in Dreux is 11 p.m. I would have to do my very best to see this game.

It seemed going to Paris was the only option. I emailed a couple of fellow New Englanders who are doing the same job as me in Paris and who I know have watched at least one game of the series, asking them where I should go to watch and if they wanted to join me. As of a half hour ago, I had received no response, so I must go it alone. I go into Paris with no knowledge of whether or not I will actually be able to see the game, armed only with my notebook and pen, a bottle of water and a cheese sandwich which I hope will sustain me through the night, and a list of phone numbers of bars that some dude with a website says are potential spots to see baseball games. Not many weapons in my arsenal, but they will have to do.

The logistics of this trip seem quite harrowing. Due to the unfortunate lack of transportation options, I had to take the 9 p.m. train, the last one of the night. In preparation for the all-night affair I attempted a long nap but only was able to pound out an hour and a half; that will have to suffice as my sleep for the night. I will arrive in Paris at 9:46, making this a rather quick train for the Dreux-Paris route, which can take an hour fifteen. However, the speed of the train does not make me happy on this night, as it means I will have even more excessive time to kill. Upon arrival at Montparnasse station, I will call bars until I hopefully find one that is showing the game. Then I will slowly make my way there, perhaps eating on the way a little bit of that mozzarella-gouda Provencal-tomato number I threw together before coming here, and I hope to arrive at the bar some time around 12:30, just before the Metro closes down. I will kill some time, try to nurse as few of the bar’s cheapest drinks as possible (the train roundtrip is already costing me over 11 Euro, and I am quite poor at the moment), and then, starting at 2:19 a.m., I will hopefully watch one of the most glorious events in Boston sporting history. In my plan, there will be plenty of other Bostonians alongside me, and we will revel heartily in the defeat of the evil ones before I head back to Montparnasse, catch the 7 a.m. train to Dreux, arrive at 7:54 and sprint the half mile to my school where I will be ready to teach as the bell rings at 7:58.

Plans usually don’t work out quite so well in real life, I find. However, I believe I just witnessed an omen. As I walked into the station in Dreux to buy my ticket, I saw two local guys casually breakdancing. I have always wanted to witness spontaneous breakdancing, and the fact that fate chose this night for me to run across that Dreux dude spinning on his head to the beats of his friend’s boombox on the station tiles seems too powerful to be a coincidence. It makes me think that this just may be a night where everything goes perfectly. I mean come on! Breakdancing!

...And I am pulling into Montparnasse. I’ll keep ya updated.

20 October 2004
11:45 p.m. Paris time
Pont Neuf, overlooking the Seine River, Paris

I currently smell really really bad. At least I assume this is the case; this cold has rendered my sense of smell heavily dulled due to nostril-clogging effects that it has wrought. The assumed smell is due to the fact that I have spent the last two hours frantically scurrying around this city, looking for a place to watch the game. I called all the bars on my list, which all had very American sounding names, yet only Frenchmen answered the phone, and furthermore they answered that their bars were not showing the game. I must somehow, someday exact revenge upon the dude who made that website.

But I was not deterred! I resolved to forge onward and find a bar on my own, and the logical place to do so would be the Latin Quarter or the adjoining Mouffetard neighborhood, both very happening areas. So I hopped on the Metro and spent an hour crisscrossing a good part of Paris’s left bank, but at every bar I found naught but disappointment. Then I randomly walked into a bar on Rue Mouffetard, and everyone was speaking English! And what was that on the TV? Sports! Also in English! Sure, it was British soccer, but there was at least some hope! So I asked the bartender, but alas, his bar would close at 2 a.m. "You should ask Mike, though," he added, pointing at some customer whose role seemed to be "token American." So I did ask Mike. Unfortunately, all he could muster was "Hmm ... there was this bar that showed the Super Bowl ... but I don’t remember its name." I acted polite and said "Thanks" in a voice that seemed to say "No, that was not the least helpful thing I have ever heard."

Dejected, I found myself back at the Metro station with one hour until the last train back to Dreux. Should I bail out? Should I try somewhere else? Montmartre might have some bars that would show it…it is a neighborhood that stays up pretty late, thanks to the bustling crowds brought in by the Sexodrome. Hmm, Montmartre would take too long to get to though, and if I didn’t find a bar I wouldn’t get home, and would be stranded. Maybe I should just accept defeat and go home ... but that just wouldn’t make sense! The breakdancers in the station were such an obvious omen; how could they be wrong? I had to give it one last shot, but it would have to be somewhere on the way back to Gare Montparnasse.

I looked at the map ... there was only one idea that came to mind. I had heard that this Irish pub, the atrociously named Le Galway, was "really cool." Perhaps they would be showing the game -- and they would be on the way, kinda. If I got off at the Pont Neuf stop, I could walk to Le Galway, and if it failed, I would just walk over to St-Michel, on the same line as Montparnasse. The plan was put into action, with the planned walking replaced by running. I was short of time, but there was Le Galway on the riverbank just as I remembered it! And Irishman was working the bar; perhaps I could garner some Boston sympathy from him. Because, ya know, I am the picture of an Irish Bostonian, and I swear it to be true on the name of the holy Imam Hussein. "What time are you open until?" I asked.

"2 a.m.," he replied. The dream was over.

Of course, when my dreams are destroyed I tend to want to let my dreamcrushers know that they have crushed my dreams, so I told him, "I came to Paris looking for a place to watch the baseball game--" and I was going to continue whining when he interrupted me.

"It’s a big game, right? At 2. World Series, right?"

"No, but the winner goes to the World Series. Boston against New York."

"I think they should be showing that at the Highlander. This Scottish bar with a big Scottish flag in front. Go up to the Pont Neuf, and take a left onto a small road, and it is right there."

Could this young scruffy Irishman be my savior? I was hoping it would be true. I sprinted the 400 meters to the bridge, turned left, and explored the road. Fifteen minutes passed with no Highlander. I stopped running; even if the game wasn’t on, I could not make my train. I was now in Paris for the night.

I was lost, thus I needed directions. I saw a woman passing my way, so I called out "Pardon? Pardon?" She averted her eyes and kept walking, which probably meant I looked like a beggar or some other variety of hobo. Probably should have washed my hair today. Then I saw a girl approaching, so I accosted her in my broken French. "Pa...Pardon, savez-vous où se trouve le Highlander?"

She stared at me for a second, then burst out laughing in my face. "What?" I asked her in English, "What is so funny?"

"I’m sorry," she replied in her distinctive British accent, "I just think it’s funny because I’m in exactly the same situation as you."

"You mean horrible French?"

"Yes, if I were asking directions I would have said it the exact same way because I am just as confused as you. It’s oddly reassuring."

I love random conversations that get all quasi-philosophical (especially when they are with women) and this one had potential. She and I talked for a minute about the difficulties we shared in our bizarrely displaced lives. She seemed rather cool; furthermore, she didn’t seem to mind my stench. I probably would have asked for her number if I weren’t in such a rush, or if I had any self-confidence at all, the latter being more crucial. But in any case, I had business to attend to, so the mysterious stranger and I parted ways.

I wandered back to the river, and found that there was another little street by the Pont Neuf. I walked down it for ten yards, and there was the Scottish flag! I had never been so happy to see the Cross of St. George, or St. James, or whatever saint it is whose cross is on the Scottish flag, how the hell should I know? I walked inside, and saw an annoyingly trashy looking girl yammering away by the bar in an American accent. Sweet, obnoxious Americans were such a good sign! I asked the waitress, "Are you showing the baseball game?"

After all this buildup, victory came in the form of a straightforward comment. "2 o’clock. We have a big screen set up downstairs."

Hallelujah.

So now, I sit here waiting on a one of the most storied bridges in the world, writing of my wacky adventures. This should be quite a night. It’s just pretty funny, because I never really thought of myself as a baseball fan. I have always though it was a pretty boring, slow game. Not a sport, a game. Seriously, could any game where people like El Guapo became stars be considered a sport? Yet here I am, going out all night without a plan in a city I barely know just to try to see the game, with no guarantee in advance that I would actually get to see it. For a non-fan, I am a pretty big fan. I guess there is just something visceral in me that has seeped into my blood after two decades in New England that compels me to be here right now. If I am from New England, I have to be here. Especially after last year.

Ugh, last year. That is why I am here.

Yankees suck. And I am going to eat my cheese sandwich.

21 October 2004
6:57 a.m. Paris time
Gare Montparnasse, Paris, on the Granville-bound train stopping in Dreux

It has been just over six hours since I last wrote, so I’ll have to do a bit of a recap. Let’s start with the sandwich. It was tasty, but all the frantic running around Paris (in the rain that I forgot to mention, no less) somehow got it flattened and soggy. Passable, I guess. Then I decided that 1 a.m. was a good enough time to head into the bar. The first thing I noticed was a girl in a Red Sox shirt, and instantly it felt like home, if home were moved across an ocean and crammed into a small smoke-filled bar populated entirely by complete strangers.

However, the strangers seemed pretty nice. After ordering a pint of Strongbow Cider, I stood in a crowded corner of the bar where people were watching the end of the Astros-Cardinals game. Then I heard the Sox-shirt girl say to a similarly dressed, awkward-looking Asian guy, "Oh you go to Fletcher?" Having been working on my application to Fletcher, the international relations graduate school at Tufts, I jumped into the conversation. The Japanese guy had indeed gone Fletcher, and that cute girl in the Sox shirt was on study abroad from Tufts, and was from Washington Square back in Brookline. The connections were oddly comforting…but sometimes suffocating, like when the girl noticed my Brandeis Crew sweatshirt and asked if I was Jewish. Brandeis culture just can’t be escaped, even in Paris!

Then we went downstairs with the girl’s friends, all from the same study abroad program. They included a diehard Cubs fan, Mike, who was jumping on the Sox bandwagon because it was the next best thing. I also met a group of adult males, Red Sox fans except for the surly muscular guy in the Yankees jersey, who were all attending some conference on countering terrorist money laundering. They didn’t give many details about their jobs but the words "Secret Service" came up an awful lot. Among them was an Italian they brought along from the conference who knew nothing at all about baseball and kept asking rudimentary questions along the lines of "He hit the ball, what happens?"

When the game started, everyone’s attention became fixed on the projection screen the Highlander (bless those drunken Scots) had set up for the game. Johnny Damon’s hit set off a wave of loud applause, and it then became evident that Sox fans outnumbered Yanks fans by around three to one. When David Ortiz knocked the Sox ahead 2-0 later in the inning, the place erupted. "D.O. is so good!" shouted the enthusiastic Japanese guy, and, well, he was right.

The rest of the game was, as I am sure you know, exquisite to the eyes of a New Englander. In the 2nd, when the bases were loaded for Damon, I thought about taking out my camera to get a shot of the crowd in case he hit a homerun. After one pitch, I heard the snap of the bat and thought, "Shit, too late." Well, shit, cause the place went hysterical and I could not capture it, but good, because it was a home run. More specifically, a grand slam against the Yankees in Game 7 of the ALCS. Pretty sweet, actually. It all seemed to coast on from there. I would occasionally hear girls trying to explain things to Giovanni... "the first number is the number of balls, that is when the pitcher does not throw the ball in the right area," or the Japanese dude would go on about how much he came to love the Red Sox during his two years at Tufts. The guy was trashed and socially bizarre that can only be described as alcoholically Woodrowesque (which some of you may understand but others won’t), but hey, he knew every member of the Sox relief staff, so I can’t fault him for anything.

Then came the 7th inning, when Derek Lowe was pulled after six stellar innings of one-hit ball and replaced by Pedro. The guy with Secret Service connections from Haverhill was not pleased. None of us were, really, but this guy was particularly pissed. "Francona, why the fuck are you doing that? It’s so fucking stupid!" Then when Pedro gave up 2 runs, the guy became downright belligerent. "Fucking Francona, you fucking asshole!" he shouted. "This is just like last year, I will fucking kill you!" I wanted to tell him that it was ok, that we still had a five-run lead, but I was worried he would go counter-terrorism on my Middle Eastern ass, possibly enlisting the help of the ripped Yankees fan who had not gone five words in the past hour without saying either "bullshit" or "fuck", so I kept quiet.

I let it go, and the game went on beautifully from there. With one out left, the impending jubilation began seizing all of us Sox fans, who seemed to be vibrating in place awaiting the glorious moment. One more out to go, and the Yanks were down 10-3; a girl from the study abroad group expressed the sentiments of her fellow Yankees fans everywhere when she cried out, "Oh my God, this is actually really happening, isn’t it?!?!"

And it was. After the final out, I enthusiastically hugged so many people I had never seen before nor would I ever see again, and I slipped out the door. 6:10 a.m. I headed for Montparnasse, bought myself a little pastry for breakfast (not bad, though the apricots could certainly have been riper) and boarded my train. Now I have three hours of class to teach starting in about ten minutes. It is going to all have worked out just as I hoped. I guess those breakdancers really could be counted on to bring me happiness after all.

What a night.