BTVF: Who is Gaétan Alibert?
G.A.: What can I say about myself… I’m nearing 43, living in the Yvelines with my partner and daughter. I’m a police officer specializing in sexual, gender-based, and domestic violence. In baseball, I wear many hats. Part of my free time is dedicated to various websites and podcasts I collaborate on or created. After starting on Honus, I joined The Strike Out, the Hype podcast, and the sports culture site Ecrire Le Sport. I also created a cricket site in 2015, Esprit du Cricket, and a baseball podcast in 2020, Culture Baseball.
I also manage the community for some of these sites, as well as the French fan account for the Yankees on Twitter, @FrYankees, which I created over a year ago, and Baseball Féminin en France on Facebook and Twitter. Lastly, for the past year, I’ve volunteered with the French Baseball and Softball Federation as part of the Federal Memory Commission and with the Discipline Commission on issues related to sexual and gender-based violence.
Of course, I’ve also been a baseball player, a bit of softball, a team coach, umpire, and manager for nearly ten years, at the Paris Université Club and then with the Patriots de Paris.
BTVF: How did baseball hook you?
G.A.: When I was around 25, my girlfriend at the time left me, and I suddenly had a lot of free time. My little brother then recommended a Japanese anime, now world-famous, Naruto. I had given up on manga and anime for a few years. Naruto got me back into it, and after that, I started watching a lot. Then one day, I stumbled upon a baseball anime called Major. This anime follows the adventures of young Goro, a baseball prodigy, from childhood to adulthood, facing life’s ups and downs, like deaths or injuries, while shining with extraordinary talent as a pitcher. It’s an anime I loved immediately, with its energy and a hero whose talent and passion draw you in.
When I moved to Paris in 2008, I thought, ‘new city, new life, why not a new sport?’ I saw that the PUC was holding indoor training sessions near my apartment, so I went to try it out. I was immediately hooked. I loved the movements in baseball and their difficulty mixed with an obvious playful aspect. Hitting a beautiful shot, making a great catch, or striking out feels like you’re the king or queen of the world. So quickly, I started volunteering at the club, organizing the famous IDF Series, then taking on the role of communication manager the following year. From there, everything snowballed. At the club, I became a coach, manager, umpire, and director. On the field, I played every position, though I mostly played outfield, first base, and my favorite position, pitcher.
Outside the club, I joined the FFBS communication commission for 2-3 years and started writing articles on Honus in 2010. This part is another reason why I became addicted to baseball. I’m a history and culture enthusiast, and baseball is a sport with unparalleled historical and cultural richness in the sports world. It’s as much the game as its universe that fueled my passion. That’s one of the reasons I became a fan of the New York Yankees, with their immense history and popular culture.
BTVF: You’re a collector of baseball-related items. What do you collect, and how do you organize your purchases, storage, and display?
G.A.: I’ve always had a collector’s streak. I have several memory boxes where I store various items from events, trips, and experiences that have marked me. Baseball is a sport that lends itself well to collecting. Unfortunately, for my banker and my partner. It’s money and space. I still try to reason with myself and focus more on good finds, not too expensive, at flea markets or online.
I collect a bit of everything, though I’ve seriously gotten into baseball cards over the past two years. It can be buying recent card packs, like Topps or Panini, or vintage cards. In 2021, for example, I bought a 1957 Topps card of Yogi Berra, which I’m very proud of, a 1959 Topps card of Larry Doby, and a 1975 card of one of Japan’s greatest pitchers, Yutaka Enatsu, whom I discuss in the second-to-last Culture Baseball episode. I also have a menko card of Yoshio Yoshida, a legend of Japanese baseball and former coach of PUC and the French national team in the 1990s, dating back to 1958, and other menko cards, typical and beautiful Japanese cards from the late 1940s. Another card I love is a 1971 Topps card of Nolan Ryan. The card isn’t in great condition, but it still impresses. The jewel of my card collection is a T206 of Lena Blackburne, dating back to 1909-1910. It’s the same type of card as the Honus Wagner card worth millions of euros. Mine is worth just a few dozen euros. I’m just a civil servant…
Otherwise, I collect figurines from various brands and periods, baseball and softball balls, old magazines, books, manga, posters, art drawings, pins, etc. I’m eclectic. I particularly enjoy collecting old French magazines where baseball appears, whether in comics or reports, like an issue of the magazine La Vie Heureuse from 1907, which talks about women’s baseball with a baseball player on the cover.
Unfortunately, I don’t have enough space to display everything, but I try to show as much as possible in my living room while leaving space for the rest of the family. Fortunately, I manage to reason with myself financially enough to avoid adding a new object every other day.
BTVF: For a few years now, you’ve lent your pen to several French media outlets (Hype, Strike Out…) on American baseball and others. How do you approach writing from a passionate perspective to other enthusiasts?
G.A.: You’ve gathered from my previous answers that I’m more of an actor than a spectator. When I have knowledge and/or a passion, I need to share and exchange. After that, I try to find a balance between what I want to write and what people might want to read or listen to, so everyone finds something. One of my goals is to make baseball interesting and understandable, to be read or listened to by both passionate fans and newcomers. Even within the FFBS, not every licensed person is necessarily interested in the history of baseball and softball, or the news from the MLB. Even less so in the news from French baseball. But my conviction is that baseball culture, in the broad sense, can be a unifying element to attract practitioners to our disciplines and keep them engaged.
Another aspect of my writing is mixing my interests in history, culture, arts, and social issues. Often, my articles or podcasts will explore multiple angles. When I talk about the new MLB rules or the Astros scandal, beyond the news, I’ll provide a historical, cultural, and political perspective to understand the different dimensions of a current event that is rooted in a rich past and an expected or unwanted future for some.
Finally, I also try to be a sort of baseball storyteller, especially when I talk about history. I try to bring history and stories to life. And baseball is so rich in narrative that it’s something very natural and perfectly suited to the spirit of the game for me.
BTVF: Writing naturally led you to other forms like books. Tell us about this new adventure that’s just beginning?
G.A.: Indeed, I wrote a book on the history of baseball that will be published in mid-March by Blacklephant Editions, a young but ambitious Breton publishing house that was seduced by my manuscript. It’s a series of portraits, five women and five men, with intentional parity, allowing me to explore various aspects of baseball history and culture, mostly in North America, but also in Japan and France. That said, even though it’s not fiction, I tried to keep that storytelling side to make the writing as fluid as possible. The idea isn’t just to reach the passionate, the experts. With my publisher, we also want to reach a wider audience to help bring baseball and softball out of the shadows. And for that, the narrative must be fluid because I provide a lot of information. For those who know, I tried to have a style close to Bill Bryson and an editorial approach like Dave Zirin.
Learn more: here
Available starting March 17, 2020
Otherwise, I’m already working on another book project, still on baseball and softball, for another publisher, with a different approach but always with the idea of interesting newcomers in our disciplines while giving French enthusiasts something to read.
BTVF: What can we wish you?
G.A.: The success of this first book. There have already been books on baseball, written in France, that were published, but they were books that mixed a bit of history, explanations of rules, terms, and techniques. And they all start to date. To my knowledge, this is the first time a book, solely dedicated to the history of baseball, will be published in France. I don’t know if we can call it a test, but we’ll see where the potential of baseball lies with the general public. With the centenary of the FFBS in 2024, we need to take a step forward in the media coverage of our sports. This centenary will be in the shadow of the Paris Olympics. We must therefore now invade the media space. I think it has already started in recent years with the appearance of sites or podcasts like The Strike Out, Hype, A Coup Sûr, The Free Agent, Home Run Seby, Le Homera, the MLB FR community on Twitter, and many others. And, of course, Baseball TV France.
I remember how alone I felt to talk about baseball on Twitter before 2015. Since then, baseball has gained followers each year on social networks, and this is also felt in the FFBS rosters. Clubs and the federation, which communicated little or not at all, are now proactive on this aspect, long at the bottom of the list. Just look at the quality of web TV broadcasts by clubs like Sénart or La Rochelle, the quasi-professionalism of the Rouen Huskies’ communication, the arrival of the MLB on beIN Sports, or the more frequent articles on L’Equipe’s website. We remain a minor sport, but the dynamic is there. I hope the book will contribute to boosting this dynamic.
I’m talkative, but a final little word to thank Baseball TV France for this interview and for the work provided.
Interview conducted by Didier CANNIOUX
