Season on the road

What almost was, and maybe still could be. Also, 7 other things worth your time.

In 1992, a 22-year-old Canadian baseball player named Michel Laplante, who’d grown up in a town called Val d’Or, Quebec—maybe an eight-hour trip northwest of Quebec City (which is already pretty far north)—was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates of Major League Baseball.

From what I can tell, Laplante gave it his all. He played year after year after year in the minors—traded from the Pirates system to San Diego to Montreal to Atlanta—but he never actually made it to the major leagues.

If you look him up on Baseball-Reference.com, he didn’t hang up his cleats until 2007. Then, after he was done playing, he moved into sports administration. He’s now the president of a minor league team called Équipe Québec.

That’s how I happened to talk with him yesterday—not so much to discuss his own baseball journey, at least not at first, but instead to learn about the experience of this year’s club.

Because Équipe Québec is really a temporary consolidation of several other Canadian teams playing in the…