MLB
The St Louis Cardinals split the London Series with the Chicago Cubs with superb baseball
After a dreadful game one, the Cardinals pulled themselves together and put on a superb show to split the series with the Cubs in London.
The first ten innings of Major League Baseball played in London were terrible. The Chicago Cubs were able to score at will on the St Louis Cardinals, pinning nine runs on them in game one to get the 9-1 win. Game Two started much the same as the Cubs jumped on the Cards in the first inning and put up four quick runs.
But then, as if stumbling awake from a long slumber, the Cardinals came to life. They started to do something that they had not yet done in London: play baseball.
First they responded with the bat, grinding out singles, making walks pay, hitting sacrifices when needed, and slowly they managed to level the game. By the fourth inning, they went ahead and never looked back.
The key to the St Louis win, however, was on the mound. The Cardinals bullpen was superb, shutting down those prolific Chicago bats, and the defense rose to the challenge as well, with the bobbled balls, fluffed throws and slow reactions of game one long gone.
The Cubs threatened at times and with runners on first and second with no outs in the third, a routine 4–6-3 got the first runner but not the second. Without hesitation, Paul Goldschmidt turned a double play into the rarer 4-6-3-2 version of itself, going home to catch Ian Happ by a good ten feet. The reaction by the Cardinals infield was exquisite.
Saturday marked MLB’s best-attended Saturday in eight years, with 54,662 showing up in London Stadium; lower than the 66,000 capacity but still making a total two-day attendance close to the 110,000 mark, which for an MLB game in Europe between two, no offense, mid-table teams is remarkable.
While the UK may be a long way off becoming die-hard baseball country, there is certainly an appetite for the game in the capital. Good news for next year’s series which will see the Mets and Phillies come across the pond. And it will be of especially good news to the ears of London Mayor Sadiq Khan and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, who have described London as of ‘strategic importance’ to MLB’s future plans.