and Yankees victories.
That was after all the best thing about the two game MLB London Series between the Yankees and the Red Sox… two victories for the Yanks.
It wasn’t perfect, it could never be perfect, nothing ever is. It was too sunny and hot… they were probably expecting London fog. The foul territory was too big… actually that was a good thing, seeing Chavis having a panic attack every time the ball popped up. The stadium was too white… as David Lammy would say. Too overhangy… too streamlined for wind apparently. Well, it probably makes a better baseball ground than it does a football one.
The Yankees starting pitchers didn’t quite take to the new surrounds… though Stephen Tarpley making his first start for the club enjoyed his one inning, where he gave up four runs on three homers.
There was certainly hitting, 65 hits producing 50 runs batted in over the two games, and thirty pitchers, that took four and three quarter hours for the first and nearly four and a half hours for the second, lots of two out hits. Well, there’s a tradition of Yankees Red Sox games taking a while when on British telly, going back to those days on Channel 5. So, yeah the commentators complained about the length but the paying punter got their money’s worth.
That’s the one negative of the shebang. Though it was well attended, nearly 60,000 per game. Reported and people knew about it, did it catch the casual observer or was it just the diehards? The NFL games are shown on the main BBC channels, one and two. The type of channel that someone flicking through will start with and might catch the game by accident and stay watching. This series was shown on BT Sport. It’s not the same, you don’t get your casual viewer flicking through. It was on the BBC but on their sport app. So again you had to dig it out and you’d only do that if you were already interested. So no “free to air” coverage.
The games looked like they were gonna be blowouts, came back, then went back to blowouts then got tight at the end. The Red Sox had chances late in both games to get level. Thankfully Chapman stopped that.
DJ LeMahieu kept his hitting streak going. Thought I’d put the kiss of death on him after I managed to get him in my fantasy team only for him to go hitless and be swinging at everything in his first three at bats in the second game. That and Didi keeping up the club HR streak.
And it all adds up to another two in the W column and another two games that other lot are behind in the league… almost worth putting up with all the British cliches the commentators were constantly trying to crowbar in…
