Le Grand Orange

DIY task: Please supply your own color photo of President Trump.

This morning, while watching his Rose Garden speech about the “deal” to end the government shutdown, I wondered, again, if it would be appropriate to recycle former Major League Baseball player Rusty Staub’s nickname when referring to President Trump. With his carrot-top hairdo and tanning-salon-hued skin, the president clearly fits the bill for the third word of the wondrous French phrase Le Grand Orange. He falls short, though, when you consider the true meaning of the second word.

Rusty Staub played for five teams over 23 Major League seasons, averaging .279 for his career and hitting 292 home runs. Some of the red-headed slugger’s best years came when he starred for the expansion-era Montreal Expos from 1969 to 1971 and later in 1979. Beloved in Montreal, he was given the endearing nickname Le Grand Orange by a local sportswriter and it stuck. He retired from baseball in 1985. Sadly he died last year at age 73.

Staub was a big man, 6 feet 2 inches and 200 pounds.

Assuming he could hit a curve ball, President Trump (6 feet two inches and an estimated 270 pounds) would play baseball at a larger size than Rusty Staub. So I suppose you could literally string three words together and refer to the president as Le Grand Orange (The Large Orange) if you were speaking French.

But it wasn’t just size that earned Staub the “Grand” in Le Grand Orange. In his nickname the word “grand” translates more accurately as “great” rather than “large” or “big.” He was a hero in the French-speaking province of Quebec, not just because of his slugging but because he took the time to learn their language and was a team ambassador on and off the field. It was a lasting love affair. The Expos retired his jersey number in 1993.

President Trump is a leader with strong ideas about where he wants the country to go. He’s got a forceful personality and is a good communicator. I’m just not sure he has the true greatness it will take to get a divided country to reach consensus on border solutions.

So why use French at all when coining a nickname for the president? No good reason except that often the French say things much better than we do or at least what they say sounds better: bon appétit, c’est la vie, s’il vous plaît, j’accuse.

Perhaps because the president’s speech was really about our southern, and not our northern, border I should do a search for a Spanish nickname.