They’ll Pitch Baseball, but With a French Twist : Travel: Dana Hills’ Bob Canary, San Clemente’s Paul Prinz head a group that will teach the game’s fundamentals in Europe.

Jim Reach knew France wasn’t a baseball hotbed, but he still couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“We were driving on a bumpy dirt road, winding through trees and fields, and we kept wondering, ‘Where the hell could this baseball field be?’ ” said Reach, the former baseball coach at Rancho Santiago College and Savanna High.

Reach and his partner Pat Doyle soon arrived at their destination in a countryside near Mantes La Jolie, about 40 miles west of Paris.

“We finally saw a forested area, and beyond the trees, coming out of the middle of nowhere was a baseball field, just like the one in the movie ‘Field of Dreams.’ ”

Well, sort of.

The baseball diamond was in the middle of a field, but it was not a corn field. The pitcher’s rubber was made of plywood, and a nearby batting cage was surrounded by a small forest, Reach said.

“The guy who built it was this older Frenchman who played like a little leaguer,” Reach said. “He couldn’t play the game of baseball that well, but he loved it. This guy was a fanatic and he couldn’t get enough of it.”

For eight weeks in France last summer, Reach and Doyle--the baseball coach at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton--were ambassador/coaches for Major League Baseball International. The pair taught baseball fundamentals to people of all ages.

They worked with everyone from the French national team, which hopes to qualify for the Olympics in Atlanta, to 30-year-olds trying baseball for the first time.

“It was a marvelous experience,” Reach said. “I can’t wait to get back there.”

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This summer, one of Reach’s former players will return to France.

Dana Hills Coach Bob Canary, and San Clemente Coach Paul Prinz, will travel to France for the third consecutive summer to teach baseball to kids ages 15-18.

“It’s a grass-roots program,” said Canary, who played for Reach in 1968 and helped Savanna win the Southern Section Major Division championship.

“Baseball is not real popular in France, and the kids who like baseball don’t have much opportunity to learn about the game. This is one of the few chances they have to learn from qualified coaches.”

The camp is based in Lablachere, a small, rural village in southern France.

“It’s a couple of hours north of Marseilles,” Canary said. “Only 400-500 people live there, although it comes alive in the summer because of the tourists. But baseball is completely foreign in that area.”

Andree Penney, an Irvine resident who was born and raised in France, started the camp in 1992. She owns a large house in Lablachere, where the campers will stay from July 20-Aug. 3.

“The idea was to bring over American kids and use baseball as medium to integrate them with the French kids,” Canary said.

Although Canary and Prinz do not speak French, baseball served as an interpreter.

“Sports is something where language isn’t much of a barrier,” Canary said.

But there were other obstacles.

“They have no facilities whatsoever,” Canary said. “Most games are played on soccer fields, so there are no backstops. Paul and I would laugh sometimes because the fields were so bad.

“If we saw some fields like that in the U.S., we’d turn around and go home. But after awhile over there, you don’t worry about it. The kids don’t know the difference.”

And the kids keep Canary coming back for more. “It’s amazing how stimulated these kids are,” Canary said. “That’s one of the great attractions of going there. It’s just baseball.”

This season, Canary’s Dana Hills team was ranked No. 1 in the county in one preseason poll, but the Dolphins missed the playoffs when they lost to Mission Viejo, 6-4, on the final day of the regular season.

“Sometimes, here we get caught up in the competitiveness of winning and losing,” Canary said. “But you go there and feel liberated just to coach baseball at an elementary level, working with kids who are out there for the pure enjoyment of the sport.

“For me, it’s like being a kid again.”

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There were other benefits for Canary besides the baseball.

“We have a well-rounded camp,” he said. “We take the kids on a canoe trip, hiking, horseback riding . . . “

And there’s the food.

“Every meal we had was a French feast,” Canary said. “I probably never ate better in my life. And of course, Paul and I figured since we were in France, we have to sample the wine.”

On their first trip, Canary and Prinz also went to the Olympics in Barcelona.

“Baseball is growing in Europe,” Reach said. “The French would love to bring major league baseball players over for an exhibition, but I’ve already told them there’s no way a major leaguer would risk his career playing on some of these fields here.”

In a way, the major leagues already have reached France.

According to Reach, Major League Baseball memorabilia is very popular in Paris.

“Anything with the Mets or Dodgers logo, a baseball cap, a jersey, it’s a fashion statement there,” Reach said. “A major league baseball cap that would be $16-18 in the U.S. is $60-70 in France. The same goes for T-shirts.

“French people don’t even know who Darryl Strawberry or Roger Clemens are, but they don’t care. It’s a multimillion-dollar industry.”

For Reach, the exchange of cultures was just as important as the exchange of baseball knowledge.

“Something I always will remember was when I went to Normandy,” Reach said. “I had goose bumps. It was so beautiful, serene and peaceful now, it was just unbelievable thinking about what had happened there. It was a tremendous education.”