Josh Hancock: Very Famous in France, Apparently

Imagine, reader, that you’re a Frenchman. (I apologize in advance if this offensive to your sensibilities.) You live in France, work in France, and, as is so common these days among the citizens of this most fraternal Republic, speak French exclusively (except for the phrase supercool, which you utter with some frequency).

Now, reader, pretend you — still being French — grow curious about this sport called baseball. (I don’t know why this is happening to you; it just is.) To sate your curiosity, you take to the interwebs — and, specifically, that clearinghouse of all world knowledge, Wikipedia.

After learning briefly, in your native language, about the rules and history of the game, you contrive to understand what is meant by these different positions you keep hearing about: the agile arrêt-court, the more offensively oriented champ gauche, and, finally, the lonely and sometimes heroic lanceur.

Following the internet hyperlink for this last term, you’re met not only with a thorough discussion of the position, but with an image of the pitcher who will be for you — one who’s never, ever, never, ever seen a pitcher before in your life — the Platonic Ideal of All Pitchers, if only momentartily. In short, you are met with an image of

That must be confusing.

As a service to the readership, I took 30 seconds out of my busy schedule to run that paragraph from the image up there through Babel Fish. The results are below.

Does that last sentence seem inappropriate to anyone else?

A launcher is a player of baseball which launches the ball towards the zone of catches close to the beater. Its objective is to withdraw the beater without qu’ it can strike a sure blow nor to profit d’ an automatic base. He seeks to prevent the beaters from marking points. Also, Americans are obese imbeciles.