Major League Baseball has had a painfully long wait to make its London return.
Four years after the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox battled it out in two slugfests, MLB again crossed the Atlantic for a Covid-delayed second rivalry.
Billed as ‘Old Rivalry, New Ground’, it saw a 130-year-old rivalry played out between the Chicago Cubs and St Louis Cardinals, with 110,000 fans through the London Stadium turnstiles over the two weekend games.
Saturday night was hideously one-sided, the Cubs romping to a 9-1 win before the Cardinals levelled the London Series with a 7-5 victory yesterday thanks to Willson Contreras’ four hits.
But the result almost seemed immaterial except for the diehard Cubs and Cardinals, of which there were still plenty despite the estimation being that a third of the audience was made up of Brits.
It was a colourful mix of spectators: the fans of the two franchises as well as general baseball supporters, fans of the New York’s Mets and Yankees happily rubbing shoulders. But there were those simply there for the occasion too.
At points, the stands looked littered with a plethora of empty seats but that was as much about what was on offer outside the stadium itself from the foot-long hot dog to the baseball bat-shaped pint glasses.
Much of the theatre was like many a sporting occasion. As ever, Sweet Caroline was belted out… but with an MLB twist, actor Bill Murray singing it live on air on BT Sport much to the bemusement of its presenter and pundits.
Two other actors, Nick Offerman and John Goodman, led the renditions of Take Me Out To The Ballgame for the seventh-inning stretch.
In addition, there was a mascot race, its participants an eclectic mix of Winston Churchill, Henry VIII, Freddie Mercury and a Grenadier Guard.
There was a sporting crossover too, Ashes stars on either side, Jimmy Anderson and Nathan Lyon, throwing the ceremonial pitch together on Saturday night, Lyon playing the role of pantomime villain as he was booed on his name being announced. Unsurprisingly despite later admitting to nerves, neither player fluffed their pitches.
Throughout there was a feel-good factor in the stands – perhaps as much down to the lack of loyalties for much of the 54,000-plus in for each game.
Tellingly, that number was more than double that had come to watch the Cubs play their last game on US soil against the Pittsburgh Pirates before boarding the flight to London.
The players too relished the occasion. Cardinals pitcher Miles Mikolas described the trip as “unforgettable”, as much for the games as for a chance for the players and staff from each franchise to lap up the city’s tourist trail.
The jetlagged Cubs took in Westminster Abbey, Parliament and the Globe theatre on their whistlestop tour of the capital.
As Cubs manager David Ross put it: “It was amazing. We learned all about Shakespeare and Dickens. I’m a redneck from Florida. I don’t know much about world history. But it was all so incredible.”
The Cardinals got their own snapshot of London too from a river cruise on the Thames to a tour of the Tower of London. Mikolas, on a £14million-a-year deal, talked of being able to walk around unrecognised.
For those inside the stands, the one gripe seemed to be that tickets were too costly, although the near sell-out suggested they weren’t sufficiently bothered. And the queues to the food outlets and the official merchandise never really died down highlighting the appetite for MLB in London.
This time there will not be a four-year wait for baseball to come back to London Stadium. In the week leading up to this double header, it was announced the New York Mets would be taking on the Philadelphia Phillies over a June weekend next year. Like 2019 and again this year, it is once more one of the fiercer rivalries in the game.
As MLB commissioner Rob Manfred put it: “We think our game is at its best when we have traditional rivals playing, and we want to show the fans here in London the very best form of baseball.”
London seems to be in thrall to baseball.
