New York Yankees against Boston Red Sox will draw a bigger attendance for each game than the weekend’s two Cricket World Cup blockbusters combinedNearly 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...
The club’s sudden and unexpected upturn is a serious threat to American League powerhouses, and confirmation of one man’s skillsBilly Beane, the executive VP of baseball operations and resident mad scientist of the Oakland Athletics, is back disrupting American League powerhouses, safely ensconced beneath 50 feet of crap. After four losing seasons the ballyhooed Beane, made famous around the globe thanks to his portrayal in Moneyball, has his A’s on the brink of bringing Hollywood storylines back to the Bay Area. And only now, after nearly two months of piling up victories, is the baseball world finally taking notice. Related: 'It was intentional': Braves and Marlins brawl after Urena hits Acuna with 97mph fastball Chaptain America has a PSA for...
The National League’s two worst teams are slogging their way through lost seasons on philosophically divergent tacksOne of the happiest moments of this lost summer for the New York Mets came last week, when Jeff McNeil made his major-league debut as a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning of Tuesday’s 6-3 win over the San Diego Padres and lined a single to center field.McNeil, a 12th-round draft pick in 2013, grinded his way through the farm system to get to the majors, but even his success in making it to the top could not be a universally feel-good story because of the way the Mets handled him, claiming publicly through manager Mickey Callaway that he was “purely a second baseman”. McNeil...
MLB is already at work to ensure next year’s London series between the Yankees and Red Sox is as authentic as possibleMajor League Baseball has staged regular-season games in Japan, Australia, Mexico and Puerto Rico. But nothing the league has attempted overseas comes close to the scope of what it plans to do when the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox cross the pond to play two games next June.“This will be our biggest (international) project yet,” Phil Bradley, the players’ union’s special assistant for domestic and international events, told the Guardian this week. Related: Will Yankees-Red Sox in London break the NFL's UK stranglehold? Continue reading...
The best player of his era is making a compelling case for the greatest season in baseball history. So why aren’t more people talking about it?Anyone with even a passing interest in baseball knows that Mike Trout is, and has been since not long after breaking through as a teenager in 2012, the best player in the sport in a way that defies easy categorization. The Los Angeles Angels’ center fielder does most baseball things exceptionally and none of them badly. He hits for average (.306 career batting average, sixth among active players) and he hits for power (.571 slugging percentage, first) while playing in a park that favors pitchers. His patient plate approach routinely lands him among the league...