Meet two Eurosport journalists: Laurent Vergne and Maxime Dupuis. Following the recent release of their latest book ‘Les grands récits du sport’, they open up to Baseball TV France about their work and their views on baseball worldwide and in France.
BTVF: Who are you Laurent Vergne and Maxime Dupuis?
M.D.: I’m Maxime Dupuis, deputy editor-in-chief at Eurosport.fr, a sports enthusiast, and reporter covering major football competitions since 2004. A passion for sports and history, which naturally finds its outlet in… the Grand Narratives.
L.V.: I’ve been a journalist for about 25 years now, and soon 20 at Eurosport. It was a return to my roots for me since before joining the Eurosport.fr editorial team in early 2003, I had already done an internship at Eurosport in 1999 for a few months. I’ve covered many events, Winter and Summer Olympics, FIFA World Cups, Rugby World Cups, Tour de France, Grand Slams in tennis, etc. Today, I split my time between covering major events and long formats, like the Grand Narratives.
BTVF: You teamed up to release a book that tells us great stories across the world of sports. What are your selection criteria for choosing one story over another?
L.V.: That was clearly the hardest part. 14 Grand Narratives is barely 10% of our production. Personally, keeping just 6 (the 7th, in my case, was a new one, the one about Martin Fourcade) was heartbreaking knowing I’ve written around 80. We decided to keep no more than one Grand Narrative per sport to make the book as diverse as possible. We also wanted to balance well-known and lesser-known stories, men and women, different time periods, etc.
M.D.: We selected the stories we preferred and those we preferred from each other. We mixed all that and came up with this selection. The idea was also to offer readers a broad range of what we had written: avoid ten narratives about F1, football, or tennis, for example. The idea was to have something for everyone, with our favorites and the stories we found most interesting. For example, the Harding-Kerrigan affair. I really wanted it in the book because the story is completely crazy.
BTVF: Baseball is represented in your work, but in the place that France reserves for it, namely as an American curiosity and rather in the 20th century. Do you have more contemporary stories in reserve?
L.V.: We absolutely don’t rule out anything. Through baseball, what interested us was mainly addressing legendary pages and figures of MLB in the United States but which, in France, are probably less known. The Curse of the Bambino, an episode we included in the book, for example, is, in our eyes, a story perfectly « calibrated » for the Grand Narratives: a sports legend, a connection with popular culture, a totally crazy story… It had everything. But a more contemporary episode, why not.
M.D.: I have two stories in mind that I’ve had for some time and would like to tell: Mark McGwire, his record, and the suspicions that followed. His duel with Sammy Sosa fascinated me, and it was one of the few stories to cross the Atlantic. More recently, the Astros scandal and this cheating almost too surreal to be true. They’re not hyper-positive stories, I grant you.
BTVF: As sports journalists, do you think French baseball could one day emerge in French sports and in what way?
M.D.: Good question. Complex answer. Having attended several games in the United States, I must admit that baseball is a unique experience, and perhaps the most American there is. After that, can French baseball stand out? Possible, but it needs to be accompanied by a real story or XXL results. Or a player who breaks through on the other side of the Atlantic.
L.V.: It all depends on what we mean by emerge. Baseball, like American football, is still practiced here by enthusiasts. Can it become mainstream one day? I don’t think so, but after all, you never know. In the short or medium term, say in the next 10-15 years, it still seems difficult to imagine. There would need to be a popular enthusiasm that, so far, doesn’t exist or is too little.
BTVF: Eurosport, the channel where you work, does not broadcast or chronicle baseball at the European level. Is this an editorial choice or just a matter of low notoriety?
L.V.: We are a relatively small team. We are not L’Équipe and cannot cover all sports. Naturally, we adapt to our audience. The place of baseball in France is limited. Little practiced, little followed. It’s what we call a niche sport in France. Sometimes, we would like, personally, to do much more on certain sports. That’s the case for me with American sports, a passion of mine. But we work for an editorial team, not for a personal site or blog. This sometimes causes frustrations.
M.D.: The chicken or the egg. Always the same thing. The answer to this question lies in the previous one. A trigger is needed.
BTVF: Is a second volume of ‘Grand récits du Sport’ in the works?
M.D.: Fingers crossed.
L.V.: In the works, no. It’s too early for that because it will inevitably be linked to the sales figures of this one. But in principle, yes, it’s an idea we have, whether from our side or from our publisher, Amphora.
BTVF: What can we wish you?
L.V.: A second volume!
M.D.: A second volume. With other baseball stories in it.
Interview conducted by Didier Cannioux
