London calls Sox, Yanks
Novelty soon to be norm
Now that Major League Baseball has made it official that the Red Sox and Yankees will travel to London next year for a two-game series, the only real question is why it took so long.
And by “why it took so long,” I’m not referring to the formal announcement, given that various winks and nods had already guided us to believe the Sox and Yankees are headed for London.
No, the question here is why it has taken so long for MLB to pack up the Red Sox and Yankees and send this Great Rivalry to Great Britain. For if there’s one thing we all know about MLB is that it’s no different than the NBA, NHL and NFL in its lust for the international marketplace. It’s why the Red Sox have played in Japan, it’s why the Patriots and Celtics have played in London and it’s why the Bruins opened the 2010-11 season in the Czech Republic.
The Sox and Yankees should have played in London years ago, and not just because of the all-you-can-bleat smorgasbord of lame jokes it offers. Every home run will be “the shot heard ’round the world!” The Yanks beat the Redcoats and now they’re gonna beat the Red Sox! And, of course, Sports Jeopardy for $400: “Each is responsible for a Boston Massacre, one in the 18th century, one in the 20th century.” (“Who are the British and the New York Yankees?”)
The lords of baseball are sending the Red Sox and Yankees on tour for the same reason Broadway producers send lavish musicals on tour: Why limit a great show to just one theater? The Broadway people figured this out more than a century ago, which is why George M. Cohan’s “Little Johnny Jones” started popping up on stages across America after its initial run at New York’s Liberty Theater.
The difference, of course, is that theater impresarios can choose to assemble separate casts — one for Broadway, others for national tours. There’s only one team called the Red Sox and only one team called the Yankees. (Alas, split squads are limited to spring training games.)
It all begins with the World Baseball Classic, which, far from being a springtime round-robin series of glorified, higher-stakes exhibition games, is actually a secret laboratory. And do you know what they’re developing inside that secret laboratory? They’re developing the first International World Series, that’s what.
Permit me to use the National Aeronautics and Space Administration — NASA — to make an analogy. (Some of you are aware I’ve done this before. Please indulge me.) The NASA people didn’t just wake up one morning, listen to President Kennedy’s “We choose to go to the moon” speech and then head out to the garage and build Apollo 11.
No pun intended, but they did it in stages. First there was the Mercury program, which gave us Alan Shepard circling the globe in a souped-up shopping cart. This was followed by the Gemini program, which gave us Ed White as the first American to walk in space. This was followed by the Apollo program, which gave us Neil Armstrong and his one giant leap for mankind.
The World Baseball Classic is MLB’s Mercury program, which would make regular-season games in Europe and Asia the early stages of its Gemini program. What’ll come next, I believe, are regular-season series in Europe and Asia that are played with greater frequency, leading to a tribunal in the not-too-distant future to lay the groundwork for an International World Series.
My prediction: A roundrobin tournament will produce a team that meets the winner of the MLB Championship Series in the International World Series.
If you’re rolling your eyes and pointing out that there’ve been too many bugs in what we’ve seen so far — such as the Red Sox playing West Coast exhibition games after opening the regular season in Japan — you’re making my point. When the day comes when there is a true “World” Series, it’ll be built on the strength of the many corrections that were made after earlier, flawed experiments with international baseball.
In the meantime, fans of all teams, in all sports, better get used to sharing their heroes with fans in other countries. Here, again, we can learn from the past: The Homestead Grays of the old Negro Leagues, originally based outside Pittsburgh, became so popular that “home” games were routinely played elsewhere, notably Washington.
A Red Sox-Yankees game in London next June will be a novelty. In 20 years it’ll be the norm.
‘(T)hey are going to experience something different. We did it in Japan in ’08 and it was great.’ — ALEX CORA On playing in London