Welcome to Baseball in French, Lesson 11. Previous lessons can be found here.
Today's term is le marbre.
In English, that translates to "the marble". (As in the metamorphic rock that is often found in fancy classical sculptures. And countertops.)
What's the baseball translation?
Home plate.
I suppose it's similar to some English-language terms for home plate, like dish or platter. (Are there such things as marble dishes and platters?) Regardless, it makes me think of catchers. They spend plenty of time right behind the marble, after all. And when it comes to Expos catchers in particular, there's one guy that comes to mind above all others.
Here he is on his 1981 O-Pee-Chee card.
It's "The Kid", Gary Carter, sporting those great powder blue uniforms underneath all that gear, getting ready to protect home plate.
And imagine that home plate were an actual slab of high-quality marble. A catcher would definitely want to protect that marble from the other team trying to cross it and score a run. So maybe that's the French line of thinking.
As for Carter, there are plenty of reasons why he's the right choice.
The Hall-of-Famer was an 11x All-Star, 3x Gold Glove award winner, 5x Silver Slugger award winner, and a 2x All-Star MVP—not to mention one of the prime players on that 1986 Mets team that won the World Series.
Mr. Carter played the first 11 of his 19 MLB seasons with Les Expos, and finished up his career with one more season back in Montreal. His totals with the team: 1,427 hits, 274 doubles, 24 triples, 220 home runs, 823 RBI, 707 runs scored, and a slash line of .269/.342/.454.
Behind the marble for his career, he posted a .991 fielding percentage, and threw out 810 would-be base stealers (23rd on the all-time list as of this writing). He led the National League in caught-stealing totals in 1979 (66), 1982 (70), and 1983 (75). He led the National League in caught-stealing percentage in 1976 (50.0%), 1981 (46.8%), and 1983 (46.6%). Currently, he's 7th on the all-time list for catcher putouts with 11,785. And he was the first catcher ever to record 10,000 putouts.
Yep, that's a guy you wouldn't mind taking care of the priceless little slab of marble between the batters' boxes at your home stadium.
What other catchers would you put on the list? And what do you think about the French-language term for home plate?
Leave a comment below, and thanks for reading!
Johnny Bench was known for protecting le marbre. Ivan Rodriguez and Yadier Molina too.
ReplyDeleteI'd take any one of those guys on my All-Time Team ;-)
DeleteI would've thought that home base might've translated to something about a bastille. It's hard to believe that I once knew quite a bit of French, and now 25 years later I know like three words/phrases. Where's a sad face emoji when you need one.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, Jon. High school French class was a lonnng time ago ;-)
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