Will British experiment be a hit?

A few years ago, while on an international cruise, my wife and I shared a dinner table with a gentleman who, among other things, had held a high-ranking position within the London police force. I was surprised and curious one day when I found him wearing a New York Yankees cap and asked how he happened to acquire it.

Immediately, an expression of amazement formed on his face.

“Is that what that bloody thing is?” he blurted. “I bought it because I liked the color. I didn’t know what the ‘NY’ stood for.”

That evening at dinner he brought up the subject of his cap once again.

“Tell me,” he asked, “Are the New York Yankees a baseball side or a football side?”

I couldn’t help but think of that conversation a few weeks ago when Major League Baseball announced that the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox will play a two-game series in London on June 29 and June 30, 2019.

Will baseball be taking a bold step forward in its effort to grow the game globally, or will it merely make itself look ridiculous attempting to hammer a square peg into a round hole? How many other Brits don’t

know who the New York Yankees are and how many don’t care?

This will be baseball’s seventh attempt to take the game outside the North American continent but it will be considerably different than the first six. This will be the first time the games have been scheduled in mid-season and the first time host country will be one where most of the citizenry is not familiar with baseball.

Since 2000 there have been four excursions to Japan and a fifth is slated for next year. Baseball has been a significant part of the Japanese culture for nearly a century, so it isn’t surprising that the games there have been well received. Every game has drawn at least 44,000 paying customers.

The other intercontinental foray happened in 2014 when the Dodgers and Diamondbacks played in Australia. Baseball is not a major sport in Australia the way it is in Japan, but there is a successful sixteam league in that nation. Besides, the Aussies love every sport. More than 38,000 attended each of the big league games in the Sydney Oval.

England will be remarkably different. It isn’t baseball country by any standard. If you said “infield fly” on the streets of London most people would probably think you’re talking about an insect. A “strike” is a labor dispute. A “relief pitcher” is what you request in a pub when you want more ale.

I can only wonder how many people will be interested enough to attend a baseball “match” on a local “pitch,” even with the knowledge that the game will count in the “table.”

Both games are scheduled for London Stadium, which was built for the 2012 Olympics and has since been taken over by soccer’s West Ham United. Baseball officials concede that the facility is less than ideal but insist that it can be turned into an adequate baseball venue. It has an open roof which means there is an excellent chance that rain will interfere at some point during the two-game series. The good news is that a steady downpour — the kind that could cause a postponement — is not common in London at that time of year.

That time of year? That brings us to another matter.

Baseball’s previous intercontinental ventures have occurred in late March. They have always been scheduled a few days before the rest of the season gets under way. The participants always were given a few days to recover from travel weariness and jet lag before plunging into the rest of their schedule.

This trip will entail two seven-hour flights in less than a week and it will happen in the middle of the season. Every player who makes the trip will receive a $60,000 bonus as compensation for the inconvenience. I doubt that will be enough to quell the alibis. Inevitably some players who make the trip will go through slumps in July, and you know what they’ll probably blame it on. If one of the participating teams has a bad July — oh, I don’t even want to think of the squawking we’ll hear.

No matter what two other teams will make a similar trip in 2020. MLB has already announced that this will be a two-year experiment.

After that we’ll have some indication whether or not there has been a groundswell of baseball interest in England or the whole thing has been expensive fool’s errand.

Blimey.