Baseball proves a big hit in London as MLB seeks new foothold in Europe

West Ham's London Stadium hosted one of baseball's biggest games over the weekend.
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Tony Evans1 July 2019

New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone was emphatic about the impact of his team’s weekend two-game London Series against the Boston Red Sox on Sunday.

“It felt like something big was happening,” he said. “Something important.”

Boone had every right to be satisfied. His Yankees triumphed 12-8 yesterday after a 17-13 victory on Saturday night. Yet, even the losing Red Sox came away from the London Stadium with a sense of contentment.

This was the first foray by Major League Baseball (MLB) into the European market and the consensus was that it had been an overwhelming success.

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Attendance exceeded 59,000 on both days and the majority of those present appeared to enjoy it.

MLB has been slow to expand into the UK, but the Chicago Cubs and the St Louis Cardinals will repeat the experiment next year.

Officials expect the London Series to become a regular event and there is a long-term ambition to expand the number of games played in the capital.

The NFL have been at the forefront of bringing US sport to London and Wembley and Tottenham Hotspur Stadium will each host two matches in the autumn.

The NBA has conducted a regular-season game at the O2 for the past nine years, although basketball’s European showpiece is moving to Paris next year.

Baseball’s strategy is a belated attempt to gain a foothold in the UK as a bridgehead to Europe. The season opener in March took place in Tokyo. It was scheduled for Asia again next year, but MLB announced on Saturday that option had now been cancelled.

“I would like to have sustained play in Europe,” said MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. “I’m glad we’re coming back next year, but I am interested in having play in other cities in Europe.”

Manfred will be encouraged by what he saw here. He is not the only one. “It went even better than MLB could’ve hoped,” Jason Mastrodonato, Red Sox reporter for the Boston Herald, said.

“Fans were great, game presentation was great and there were the most runs ever scored between these two teams in a two-game span.”

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The crowds seemed to concur, although it was not a weekend for the purist. The pitching in both contests was poor. Last season, the average combined score in MLB games was 8.9 runs. The London Series averaged 25. There was only one passage of play over the two games that resembled the classic baseball experience, where pitching dominates hitting, but those four and a half scoreless innings yesterday were broken when the Yankees scored nine in their next at-bat.

Both teams were impressed with the facilities and, at least in public, dismissed the runfest as a victory for good hitting. Behind the scenes, there were concerns about the balls and atmospheric conditions at pitch level.

The fans enjoyed the slugging — there were 10 home runs over the weekend — and the mood in the stands was buoyant. “The energy never let up,” Boone said.

That was, perhaps, an exaggeration. Baseball, like cricket, is grappling with the problem of games outlasting the audience’s patience.

On Saturday, it was an exhausting 4hr 42min from first pitch to last. Yesterday was 18 minutes shorter. The crowd thinned significantly in the latter stages of both matches.

No one could deny that the fans got their money’s worth. Even in the breaks between innings, there was a serious commitment to keep everyone entertained. MLB knows the value of getting the crowd to enjoy themselves most when there is no action on the field.

Didi Gregorius, who yesterday extended the Yankees’ record-breaking sequence of 31 consecutive games with a home run, was delighted with the atmosphere. “It felt like a soccer match,” he said.

It made an important point. Baseball intends to camp out on football’s territory. MLB has London in its sights.

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