There have been a few complaints by players and others about the event: the aerodynamics of the stadium allegedly affecting the pictchers' abilty to throw breaking balls; glare off the white seats making it diffcult for outfielders to pick up fly balls; the extent of the foul territory behind home plate and along the base lines causing problems for the catcher and infielders; and most spectators being American tourists or expats (not to mention the sky-high prices of some of the tickets, many times that of those for an equivalent match-up in the US, and for food and drink at the game, with two foot-long hot dogs £25 and the 330ml bottles of Heineken being hawked in the stands £6.50).
Despite the logistics of flying the two teams three and a half thousand miles across the North Atlantic and transforming the football ground where West Ham now play their home matches, including importing North American soil for the pictcher's mound and infield dirt around the basepaths, I think MLB will count the event as a success, albeit an expereience to learn things from, especially given that the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox of the American League East Divison served up the big home run-hitting that most fans seem to want to see at the ballpark, rather that the National League-style "small ball" of pitchers' duels, base-stealing, bunts, groundouts, double plays and pitchers batting that I prefer myself.
I first watched baseball in the 2001 MLB season, when Channel 5 showed two live games a week, ESPN's Sunday and Wednesday Night Baseball (actually broadcast in the early hours of Monday and Thursday morning here, which is why, like most fans I suspect, I used to record them, and then watch them when I got in from work). In 2002, I went to the United States for the first time, on an organised coach tour along the East Coast, stopping at ballparks in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston for Orioles, Phillies, Yankees, Mets and Red Sox games with my workmate who got me into the sport, followed by independent trips to New York in 2003 and 2005 for a Mets double-header and weekend series against Arizona and the Los Angeles Dodgers at Shea Stadium and to Chicago in 2004 for a Sunday afternoon Cubs-Pirates game at Wrigley Field as part of a blues pilgrimage to the city with my brother-in-law. After Channel 5 stopped broadcasting baseball in 2008, I watched ESPN's games on Top Up TV through a card decoder that slotted into the back of your set, until that too finished in 2013.
I still follow the fortunes of my favourite team (the Cincinnati Reds) online, and watch video clips of highlights from their games (insert joke here), but it's not really the same as watching a whole game, with the pitchers making adjustments as the batting lineup rotates through nine innings, series or season, getting to know the idiosyncracies of each ballpark and the players on each team. For the serious fan, there's a multitude of stats to have fun with, from WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched) for pitchers to RISP (runners in scoring position) for batters, and many, many more (the fact that the scoreboard at the London Stadium spelt out Runs, Hits and Errors, rather than just the RHE columns that you'd see at a US ballpark, was mentioned more than once in this weekend's commentary).
I like to think that I still know the rules of baseball pretty well (including the supposedly impenetrable infield fly rule that I've never had any problem understanding, or explaining to others, and which was invoked in Game 1 on Saturday), although I had to dig out my pocket-sized rulebook yesterday afternoon when Aroldis Chapman came in from the bullpen to close out the game for the Yankees in the ninth inning to check on the conditions for a pitcher to qualify for a save.
It seems that you can now watch BT Sport's baseball coverage by downloading their app to your phone without being a broadband customer, so I may check that option out for continued regular viewing after getting my two game fix these last forty-eight hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment