Welcome to Baseball in French, Lesson 7. Previous lessons can be found here.
Today's term is la victoire protégée.
In English, that translates to "protected victory". What's the baseball translation?
Save.
Here's Jeff Reardon, master of protecting victories, on his 1983 O-Pee-Chee card.
Instead of being sabotaged by the opposing hitter, the pitcher protects the victory. Pretty cool.
Additionally, with "blown save" you're kind of blaming your pitcher
all the time (i.e., he blew it), even if he was dotting the corners and
the other team happened to do an even better job making contact and
getting hits. The French version, le sabotage, puts the negative on the
opposing hitter. He sabotaged your attempt to seal the victory for your
team. That description keeps you in noble stead. There's something nice about that, I suppose. It's more respectful. (Even
if you threw a meatball right over the middle of the plate.)
Now there's nothing wrong with the English-language term, "save". It's direct. To the point. If you're the
relief pitcher, you've saved the game for your team. But taken together
with the opposite outcome, "blown save", it's just not very exciting.
As for Mr. Reardon, he protected a victory for his team 367 times across his 16-year career, which lands him at 12th on the all-time list as of
this writing. He amassed 877
strikeouts over that time, which doesn't sound like much, but is actually not too shabby for a guy who was a reliever from the start. While with Montreal in 1985, he led
the majors in saves with 41. He's a 4x All-Star and won the World
Series with Minnesota in 1987, picking up 2 saves in the ALCS and one
more in the World Series. Three very important protected victories there.
What do you readers think? Do you go with the more noble, medieval "sabotage" and "protected victory", or is the straightforward "save" and "blown save" good enough for you?
Leave your thoughts in the comment section, and thanks for reading!
