- Baseball’s Return: Testing the Expansion Potential
- Cardinals vs. Cubs: Rivalry and Expectations
- Modifications for Faster and More Refined Games
This week, the concept of Test cricket as an exercise in amusement, enjoyment, and innovation, a recent import to the English playing fields, suffered an intellectual setback. Now, another alien is approaching.
This weekend, the national pastime of the United States will test the expansion potential of these shores by staging a temporary incursion. Forget Bazball for a moment, baseball has arrived.
This is the second exploratory trip, four years after the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox played a few games at Olympic Stadium in London. The games were bizarre and in some ways unsatisfying, but each drew nearly 60,000 fans, the largest audiences Major League Baseball has seen in 16 years, primarily because it no longer has a stadium that large.
Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals were supposed to return in 2020, but something happened.
Now they are truly here, performing on Saturday and Sunday evenings (which can be seen by some on BT Sport). In 2024, the Phillies will visit London, and in 2025, they may visit Paris. General de Gaulle would have been dissatisfied.
These games are not exhibitions; they are part of the grueling Major League schedule in which teams play 162 games over the course of six months or an average of six per week. And if they advance to the 10-team playoffs, they may encounter an additional 20 opponents.
Behind the compulsory grins and goodwill, some athletes may have wanted a shorter weekend. St. Louis manager Oli Marmol asserted that his players had explored a bit, “but some more than others.” The likelihood of a British Major League team is nil until floo powder becomes commercially available.
Every self-respecting sports organization with global ambitions now feels the need to seed the world with its game, even if, as is the case in many remote cricketing outposts, the average team consists of nine South Asian migrants, an eccentric wandering Brit, and one highly valued token local. And cricket is a significantly more international sport than baseball, which has few firm roots outside of the Caribbean, Central America, Japan, and Korea.
Undoubtedly, there is an audience for a one-off series. It is a coalition of midwestern tourists, who will make time for the sights, London’s large American ex-pat population, a few curiosity seekers, and what you might call Freddie Laker’s children and grandchildren, those of us who took advantage of cheap flights to the United States and fell in love with this brilliant, balletic, and intricate version of rounders.
Sixty thousand baseball spectators will be very loud. However, this represents only 0.001% of the UK’s population. And the majority of the remaining 99.99% will be unaware of the event.
Because the Cardinals lack the international renown of the Yankees or the Red Sox, and because St. Louis is not high on the list of tourist destinations, the level of national perplexity may be marginally increased. Its fan support and World Series wins are second only to the Yankees. Aspiring players are inducted into the “Cardinal Way,” which emphasizes athleticism and the finer points. “Cardinal Nation” extends across vast stretches of prairie.
Their supporters pack Busch Stadium as intently as 1930s Yorkshire cricket fans, many of whom keep their scorebooks. According to Derrick Goold, the chief baseball writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Cardinals’ rivalry with the Cubs is the game’s oldest inter-city rivalry, extending back to Victorian times when the two cities were competing to be the nation’s No. 2 city, a contest Chicago won handily.
But typically St. Louis wins baseball games. There is a significant cultural difference. The Cubs are the lovable underdogs, and fans flock to Wrigley Field because it’s party time: it’s a place to bring your fiancée or your friends, more like the Hollies Stand late on a Saturday at Edgbaston. But the Cubs and Cardinals dislike each other in the same jovial manner typical of baseball fans.
This season, the National League Central division has been turned on its head. Early in April, the Cardinals were the odds-on favorite to win the feeble five-team section and secure a spot in the postseason, or at the very least have their 16th consecutive season with more wins than losses.
Cardinal Nation is disgusted by their bottom-five record around the season’s midpoint.
The club neglected to strengthen the pitching, despite it being an obvious requirement. And management appeared to have become complacent, underestimating the resurgence of their competitors. The once-dismal Cincinnati Reds currently lead their division after winning 11 consecutive games.
The 2016 World Series champion Cubs have quietly improved. So, for Cardinal Nation, this weekend must mark the beginning of something significant. In baseball, there is no relegation, but there are certainly firings.
London’s two 2019 games were among the most peculiar ever contested. The first inning was tied 6-6, like a football game after a few minutes.
If 2019 is any indication, it will be massive in other respects as well. The final scores were 17-13 and 12-8. Positively, this is entertaining for an audience less sensitized to the nuances. The negative aspect was that it was so difficult to get batters out that both games exceeded four hours.
This year, additional baseball-specific modifications have been made to the stadium: the artificial turf is less springy, the foul territory has been constricted, and the “warning track” has been improved. In addition, the production has been shortened.
This year, baseball has implemented a pitch clock with penalties for tardiness during the game. This and other changes have cut game length by 25 minutes to under two and a half hours. Same duration as Cricket’s Hundred; considerably more refined.
