“Cricket is baseball on Valium.”
― Robin Williams
Sites/Topics covered in this post:
• First MLB Game in England
Go-Date: Day 158, Saturday, June 29
Lesson Learned: We got London weather in Paris, and Paris weather in London. In Paris, it rained almost every day, while here in London the only rain we’ve seen was the day of our arrival. England isn’t roasting like France and Spain during the current European heat wave, but we certainly aren’t getting the typical British fare of cool days, wet weather, and well-used umbrellas.
Be prepared, but remain flexible. We haven’t even carried an umbrella the past week in London. The days aren’t sweltering (except for the one we went to the baseball game), and the nights are lovely with a pleasant cool breeze through the window of our flat (there is some advantage of being on the 5th floor). Finally, I can wear shorts and T-shirts, but collared shirts and long pants aren’t stick-to-the-skin too hot, either.
Admit it, Ray. You’ve never liked farming.
Ellen and I love baseball. We always have. We had mini-season tickets for the Texas Rangers when we lived in Fort Worth, we go to Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles games multiple times a year, I played it growing up, we took the girls to baseball camps in the summer, even when Nancy and Katie were the only girls in the camp.
It’s a great game, and a wonderful time for all the family to go. In Washington (and Baltimore) we always go to games with Nancy, Steve, Mary Frances, Mike & of course Arleigh. Its not too expensive, you can enjoy the game and still carry on conversations. Try that at a soccer match, basketball, or football game. I also like baseball movies……i.e. “It happens Every Spring”.
In addition, I’ve always liked Kevin Costner sports movies. Maybe its corny, but some of the lines, subjects, events, and emotions portrayed in the shows resonate with me. Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, For Love of the Game, Tin Cup, American Flyers, The Upside of Anger, Draft Day, and McFarland, USA were all about sports, or at least sports plays a part of the film. I never said they were all good films, but there are a few pearls you can pluck out of there.
Ellen and I met Kevin back in 2016. Well, to be honest he was on a book promotion tour for his adventure book-writing debut “The Explorers Guild. We belonged to the Smithsonian at the time, and we attended, (along with a thousand others), so we were in the same building, but didn’t quite get close enough to shake hands and advise him that Waterworld should have been about olympic swimming and not Mad Max on a houseboat.
With that in mind, when we came to London we knew that the first ever MLB game was going to happen, so how could we miss it? We bought our tickets online and became part of history.
Major League Baseball’s first venture into the Land of Tea and Crumpets appears to be a success as the first two games played in Europe drew the sport’s highest attendances in 16 years. We can attest that this place was packed. Even the train coming out to the London Olympic Park was jammed (and stifling hot) the whole 45-minute journey to the East End.
It was fun, but bizarre as well, fifty runs in two games is what you would expect from 5-year old T-ball games if the kids can figure out whether to run to first base or third on ball contact. Which, now that you mention it is kind of like watching cricket, which is also going on here (at least on TV) at the same time as our visit.
The score of our game was 17- 13 New York. It was not actually a script written to keep fans in their seats until the final out. “So much time was spent changing the pitchers – who had the life expectancy of mayflies – and going round and round the bases, that the clock was starting to threaten midnight.” Matthew Engle. We left early. If we would have stayed to the end, we wouldn’t have gotten back to the apartment until after 1 AM, which is way past my bedtime.
It was blazing hot, we were in the sun field, and you know that when there is a 12 run first inning that things are not going well in the game. In fact, later in the game (the 6th inning) New York posted another 6-spot on Boston to put them up by 8 runs. It reminded me of Texas Tech playing Michigan, in the 2019 College World Series, if you can’t pitch, you won’t win.
Game 2 was almost as extreme but not quite as entertaining (if you like runs). But, it looked like most folks stayed until the bitter end. What in the world would cause a six hour ball game? Baseball is particularly like cricket (which has got to have the most obscure rules in the Universe) in that it is dictated by its surroundings. There are parks in the US, like Denver, or Arlington which are known as hitters’ parks, and this diamond in London may be worse. Dead center outfield was only 385 feet, which should invite the long ball, but the corners were longer at 330 feet than you find in most US ball parks, which you would think would slow down the long ball, but didn’t. But more than that, I think the pitching just sucked.
The turn-out was good, but I’d be curious about where all these people came from. A lot were from the US, I found out that surprisingly quite a few were from the Netherlands (who really like American baseball), what I don’t know is how many of those people were from England.