MLB UK or No Way?

Wembley Stadium, London
By Richard McIlroy
January 20 2018

Did you know that MLB has a London office? No neither did I, but that’s not the real question. The true head scratcher is why? It seems that apart from a pointless visit from Sammy Sosa last year, the MLB doesn’t seem to have any desire to make the UK a serious stop-off point.

[Originally published March 20, 2001]

What evidence is there that the game takes us seriously here in the UK? After all don’t forget we gave them the sport in the first place (as well as culture, a language, democracy and the basis of a proper legal system).

Admittedly taking Opening Day to Puerto Rico as the sport is doing this season makes sense, the country has produced many players currently earning a crust in the majors and has a fair to good domestic league, unlike us. On that basis we will never see ‘Opening Day UK 2010’ posters on bus shelters around the country.

There is a committed number who make up the game here, stop anybody in the street and ask them if they know we have a domestic Baseball league in this country, and the answer will inevitably be a bewildered no.

True, we have 2 live games a week on TV, but Channel 5’s reason for showing them is that its incredibly cheap and fills up 4 hours of telly in the dead of night rather than any yearning desire to see Baseball expand and prosper. But why do they not back it up with a proper magazine programme to promote its live coverage ?

Maybe a series of exhibition games would be the answer, remember when American Football was at the height of its popularity here and 2 teams would come over and fill Wembley, no one knew the rules but they didn’t care it was massive.

If that was to be replicated in Baseball we would need the best teams, but they couldn’t come over during the season, and who would want to swap the pre-season sun of spring training in Florida to pull a hamstring in the cold of Manchester. So how about the Autumn, but again come October how many families would want to sit huddled up watching a game they don’t understand? Not many.

Perhaps an idea would be to bring 2 veterans teams over, made up of players who have just retired, or maybe a couple of teams during the All-Star break, made up of the best players not picked – it’s not so stupid.

Lets put aside the overhyped Yankees/Manchester United link up The question is: whether the MLB will be wasting its time trying to court the Great British public. Unfortunately no matter how much we try and convince ourselves otherwise, I think we all know the answer.