Hypocrisy, baseball and an £11m vanity project

THE best team in baseball are coming to London next summer. Boston Red Sox completed a 4-1 World Series win over Los Angeles Dodgers on Sunday night, to record their fourth title in 15 years. On June 29 and 30 next year, they will play New York Yankees in two bona fide MLB American League games, at the London Stadium. It is very exciting. Would you pay a ball-park £11.3million for it, though? Probably not. In which case, that’s unfortunate, because E20 — the London Stadium landlords — have revealed that a full West Stand move will be needed to accommodate baseball at the venue. The West Stand conversion is the one that costs serious money. A revised, smaller switch weighs in at £4.1m. But when the West Stand needs to be pushed back, the middle-tier seats must be taken out, requiring cranes and heavy machinery, and the price skyrockets. The last time this happened was for the World Athletics Championships in 2017, at a cost of £11.3m. Even if E20 somehow managed to get the job done for 20 per cent less this time, it would still come out at over £9m. And all this for what is, basically, a vanity project for Sadiq Khan, the London Mayor. It is Khan who has told the London calling: Red Sox’s Steve Pearce London Stadium landlords he wants West Ham brought to their knees over their annual rent — but he thinks nothing of saddling the arena with a potential £11.3m bill for two nights of baseball. The reconfiguration is not just costly, but lengthy. It remains to be seen whether baseball’s arrival leaves room for any concerts next summer. At the moment, forthcoming events for the stadium show nothing but West Ham and two pricey MLB fixtures. ‘Tickets for the games are going to be like gold dust because you are not just going to be seeing the two best baseball teams in the world, but arguably the two best sporting teams in the world,’ Khan said at the event’s launch in May, a statement that may come as a surprise to many of the athletic institutions in the city he represents. Certainly to the one he wishes to squeeze to subsidise his dalliance with a sport that is barely a presence in the consciousness of Londoners. Karren Brady, West Ham’s vicechairman, had it right when she told the London Assembly that the refits for athletics were what drained the venue of all value. Baseball is no different. And while those of us who love the sport are delighted MLB is coming to town, it is ludicrous to pretend West Ham’s rent causes a loss, while sanctioning £11.3m refits for niche sports each summer.