For those who think the idea of French baseball is as far-fetched as the moon being crafted of Brie, Aaron Pribble could teach you a thing or two.
The strapping 6-foot, 5-inch left-hander was a star pitcher and first baseman for the Toulouse Tigers and, after hanging up his spikes to become a high school teacher, he’s ready to dust them off for a tour in another of baseball’s most remote outposts — Israel.
“I hadn’t picked up a baseball in two years and was wondering, ‘Can I do this?’ So I went out to play catch with the assistant principal at my school,” said Pribble, who attended the University of Hawaii on a baseball scholarship before morphing into his new persona of Mr. Pribble, world cultures teacher at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley. (And, yes, the poster of former San Francisco Giants slugger Will “The Thrill” Clark that adorned his childhood bedroom is prominently displayed in his classroom.)
“My arm felt pretty good. I thought about it and decided to sign my contract and play.”
The 27-year-old’s upcoming summer tour in the fledgling Israel Baseball League figures to be the coda of a unique sports career that has taken him from the Aloha State to the deep South to the south of France.
Pribble, a dead ringer for the actor Owen Wilson (without Wilson’s repeatedly broken nose), grew up in Fairfax, the son of Lini Bodian, a short, Jewish woman from New York and Jack Pribble, a non-Jew from Southern California.
He appears to have inherited his height — and maybe his athletic ability — from his father’s side of the family. Either way, something athletic runs in the family because Pribble’s 21-year-old brother, Alex, just completed his four-year career on the U.C. Berkeley basketball team.
Two years ago, Pribble had a blast on the Birthright Israel trip, and he still shows his students a slideshow of Israel’s scenic and cultural highlights during his Middle East section. Although he’s familiar with Israel’s sights, he would now like to get to know the people. If it’s anything like his days in the French league, he’ll have some stories to tell.
During his stint in Toulouse — France’s fourth-largest city and a short jaunt from Spain and the Mediterranean — he lived on a farm with a young man named Fred. But no one called the young man Fred — they called him “Tattoo” because of his wall-to-wall body art. Appropos of the art, Tattoo played in a French punk band.
Tattoo’s parents didn’t speak any English, so Pribble would speak to Tattoo’s mother in Spanish, who would translate the Spanish into French for her husband. After games, Pribble would pinch himself at the surreal turn his life had taken when he and his Japanese teammates would relax in French cafes speaking only in French (and, of course, hand gestures).
Pribble, who now lives in San Francisco, learned a fair amount of French, but notes that the vocabulary one learns from ballplayers is not the sort we can reprint here. He expects the same in Israel.
Prior to his tour de France, Pribble suited up for the San Angelo Colts in rural Texas and the Jackson Senators in Mississippi. He was already on his way from Fairfax to San Angelo when he received a call on his cell phone notifying him the Senators had offered him a better contract. He drove back home, charted a new driving route to Mississippi on his computer, and set off.
Prior to that, he’d played for the Solano County Crushers, managed by boyhood idol Kevin Mitchell, a power-hitting outfielder for the Giants in the 1980s and early 1990s.
“One time I was walking out on the field and a little girl asked for an autograph and, right as I as was signing it, I noticed that, right above my signature, it said ‘Kevin Mitchell, 1989 National League Most Valuable Player.’ And I remember thinking, ‘If only she knew how worthless the signature on the bottom is and how valuable the one on the top is.'”
“That was a benchmark in my life,” he laughed.
But when Israeli fans ask for his autograph, that’ll be a benchmark, too.
“I really want to know how people live over there. And I want to show the country a good brand of baseball,” he said.
“If I can get to know the people and the culture and fire up the country to a certain extent about baseball, I’ll leave a happy person.”