On July 11, 2015, two Frenchmen stood on the Boston Red Sox’s field at Fenway Park to throw the ceremonial first pitch. That year, the Red Sox had split a weekend series against the Yankees. In 2022, they swept the same Yankees.
In April 2015, the HERMIONE carried aboard a baseball, the « Lafayette Ball. » On July 11, this ball was presented to Didier Cannioux in Boston by the Hermione’s captain, in the presence of the French Consul in Boston and the Mayor of Rochefort. That evening, accompanied by three Hermione sailors, Didier Cannioux threw the first pitch of the game between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park in front of nearly 40,000 spectators.
The Story of the Lafayette Ball
Boston, Massachusetts.
In life, you can choose to succumb to fear or open the door, whatever it may hide. Often, like many I imagine, I am afraid. I remember the nights when I was little, the exams I often failed as I grew older. But that day, anxiety imposed itself on me without my choosing. It wasn’t alone. It was accompanied by an explosive but contained inner fervor. My brother Didier Cannioux could barely stand on his legs as we together stepped onto the mythical turf of Fenway Park in front of 37,000 « Yankees » thirsty for a spectacle all their own. Without him, I wouldn’t have gone. Without me, he later confided, it would have been impossible for him to do what he accomplished.
Way out there, just as far as our oldest memories, we traversed a few minutes of a dream unlike any other. We had each experienced baseball in our own way. We crossed paths briefly in the 1990s. Then the reunions. Then other things that turn men into brothers. Confidence did the rest. Sometimes it takes a lot to uncover dreams. We both glanced at each other as the American anthem filled this old monument that is Fenway Park, a symbol of the States. Overpowering and a bit outdated at the same time.
As our soles tread the dirt of Ortiz, Pedroia, Bogaerts, Victorino, Sandoval, the demigods of the stadium who watch us from the dugout over there on the right, I wonder if my buddy is going to hold up. The crowd cheers, shouts things we sometimes don’t understand, and I think: I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes. Well, yes! Well, I don’t know… And then comes what we had been hoping to see for a few weeks. This ball that crossed the Atlantic in the belly of the Hermione and that we recovered at the mooring in Boston, to the cries of « present arms » amidst the crème de la crème of the American navy. We find it again so that it can accomplish the unique « natural » journey for which it was designed. The rest is in pictures…
It now rests, surrounded by its aura, its discreet and colossal history somewhere in Rochefort, in a street that curses war. Knock on the door, fear not, and you may discover behind it, its story and its name.
Vincent Picard
