Baseball's a big hit on its return as fans fill out ground

MAJOR League Baseball has had a painfully long wait to make its London return.

- Matt Majendie

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 week-end 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’s four hits.

But the result almost seemed immaterial except for the diehard Cubs and Cardinals fans, 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 dogs to the baseball batshaped pint glasses.