LONDON — Chris Ward, a resident of Oxford and native Brit, first learned of the London Series last year when the news arrived on his Major League Baseball app. So we are not talking about a baseball novice. To the contrary, Ward has attended games at the old and new Yankee Stadium, Oracle Park in San Francisco and multiple Grapefruit League facilities.
And the more Ward learned about the Yankees’ and Red Sox’s impending visit, the less he wanted to attend.
“Wow that is a lot of money,” Ward said in a telephone interview Sunday morning, as he recalled his initial thoughts. “Sixty-five pounds (currently about 82 United States dollars) to sit in the back of the stadium? Three hundred ($379) to 400 ($506) around the basepaths?
“I looked at the layout of (London Stadium), and I saw how back the seats were going to be from the basepaths. Normally, I pick a ticket somewhere outside the bases, inside the foul pole. It’s a fair price with a good view. Those seats weren’t available because of the way the stadium curved out.
“I thought, ‘It’s a baseball game, but it’s not a baseball experience.’”
Reasonable sentiments, right? Yet when I spoke with Ward, who works for a publishing company, between Games 1 and 2, he offered his honest take on his decision.
“If I’m really honest, I did drop the ball there,” he said. “I wish I had gone. That’s the story. I was not going for the right reasons, but I was thinking, ‘Damn, I’d have had a good time.’”
Let Ward’s self-awareness and open-mindedness serve as a guide for how this inaugural venture went, and for baseball’s future in Europe. Sure, plenty of room exists for improvement. Just like when evaluating a ballplayer, though, it’s important to identify what this venture can do, rather than what it can’t.
For two straight days, the Yankees and Red Sox put on a show for people who attended either out of curiosity or because they love baseball so much that they paid the high prices and endured some logistical challenges to get there.
Did the ultra-long slugfests would turn people off? We’re talking about people who sit through cricket matches that last multiple days. Or Brits who had endured long, late nights to indulge their solitary passion and waited their lives for this. Or Americans who sat in a plane for far longer than four and a half hours in order to bear witness. You still heard “Let’s go Red Sox!” and “Let’s go Yankees” chants deep into the contest.
As for the curiosity over the makeup of the fans — Englanders versus Americans — the majority of the folks clearly knew what they were watching. How much does that matter, though? Doesn’t any event that draws nearly 120,000 people over two days clearly warrant some respect and attention?
Baseball has miles to go on that front. I leafed through the sports section of Monday’s Guardian and I saw nary a mention of this. The Times, meanwhile, featured a mid-length story near the back of its sports section and, not surprisingly, no box score.
As Ward pointed out of the light coverage, “That’s what happened with the NFL initially, and now it’s a pretty big event here.” Furthermore, next year’s Cubs-Cardinals games should benefit from taking place in mid-June, before Wimbledon, and there won’t be a Cricket World Cup with which to contend.
Here’s some free advice for how baseball can improve this, for next year and, they hope, beyond as they try to bring the game elsewhere:
Lower some ticket prices. Ward’s initial reservations weren’t wrong. At least a few thousand of the tickets should be more accessible to the masses.
Give the two teams another day off on the front end. Allow them one day to spend exploring with friends and family, as the Yankees and Red Sox did on Thursday, and then take the next day to send them as ambassadors throughout the country, taking part in clinics and other appearances. The more Englanders who can interact personally with, say, Kris Bryant or Paul DeJong, the better for the game. Day Three should be workouts and media session, as Friday was, and then two games, followed by one more day off for travel home.
Allow both teams to play with 28 active players, expanding from this year’s 26. The whole trip is exhausting for the clubs, and that’s before even factoring the type of games that we witnessed here. You certainly don’t want to debilitate the clubs as they head back to the States.
Ward said that the games were blacked out on his app, although he was able to stream them on the BBC. If there were ever a time to lift blackout restrictions, it would be this time.
Use the event’s popularity as leverage to get more cooperation from the city. Just getting to the stadium and finding the right entrance proved challenging for ugly Americans like yours truly. More directional signs next year, please.
The bottom line is this initiative should be too good to fail. The World Baseball Classic always will have its detractors, myself very much included, because it dumps on baseball’s core product, its regular season, in that it compromises spring training and risks players’ health. To the contrary, these games feature almost no downside. They must go forward. And they must keep getting better.
–Thanks very much to reader Glen DiCrocco for connecting me with Chris Ward. And thanks of course to Ward for taking the time to share his thoughts.
–This week’s Pop Quiz question came from Jay Berman of Coral Springs, Fla.: What future Hall of Famer appeared as a policeman in a 1960 episode of “77 Sunset Strip” and as himself in a 1962 episode of “Dennis the Menace”?
–Two reading recommendations for baseball fans: “Southern League,” by Larry Colton, mixes baseball and civi -rights history in documenting the story of the 1964 Birmingham Barons, farm team of the Kansas City A’s, which became the city’s first integrated ballclub.
And then there’s “Billy Martin: Baseball’s Flawed Genius,” by Bill Pennington, a mentor of mine from many moons ago at The Record. I’m just sorry it took me so long to finish this one. What a fantastic accounting of the legendary manager. If you’re a Billy Martin lover or a longtime Yankees fan … well, you probably already read this. But it’s also a must-read for fans of the A’s, Rangers, Tigers and Twins, or even non-sports fans who like learning about compelling 20th-century figures.
Your Pop Quiz answer is Sandy Koufax.
If you have a tidbit that connects baseball with popular culture, please send it to me at [email protected].