New York Yankees against Boston Red Sox will draw a bigger attendance for each game than the weekend’s two Cricket World Cup blockbusters combined
Nearly seven years’ worth of Saturday nights have passed since what was then London’s Olympic Stadium played host to an exhibition of British sporting magnificence – which lasted a good half-hour. On Saturday comes the precise reverse: a weekend of something even more un-British than winning: the Yanks are coming – to play the most alien sport of all.
In the 1980s, suborned by Channel 4, a sizeable minority of British sports followers became infatuated with that strange sport for sizeable people, American football. Basketball, being simple to organise and economical on space, has long been played in gyms and playgrounds. Ice hockey has maintained a niche, especially in Scotland. But the US’s “national pastime” has always struggled to penetrate a sea wall of bafflement and contempt.
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