The St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs, who were invited to play in the return of the London Series after a four-year hiatus, ended their trip to the United Kingdom with one win apiece.
St. Louis avenged the previous day’s loss with a 7-5 victory in Game 2 of the 2023 Major League Baseball (MLB) London Series against the Cubs at London Stadium on Friday (Sept. 25)바카라.
After a 9-1 blowout win the day before, the bats came alive for the Reds early in the second game. The Cubs scored four runs in the first inning, including a leadoff single by Dansby Swanson, to take a commanding lead.
But the Cardinals fought back. With two outs in the bottom of the second, Tommy Hyun-Soo Edmon singled, first baseman Trey Mancini made a throwing error that allowed Wilson Contreras to score from third, and Brendan Donovan followed with an RBI double to cut the deficit to one. In the bottom of the inning, Jordan Walker added an RBI single to tie the game at 4-4.
The Reds took the lead in the bottom of the fourth on an RBI single by Paul Goldschmidt, scored two runs on a sacrifice fly by Ras Nouba, and extended the lead in the fifth on an RBI single by Nolan Gorman. The Cubs rallied in the top of the ninth on a solo shot by Nico Horner, but it wasn’t enough to put the game away.
There was also an unusual record. Paul Goldschmidt became the first player in Major League Baseball history to play a regular-season game in five different countries, according to MLB.com, the official site of Major League Baseball. In addition to the U.S. and U.K., he has played in Sydney, Australia (2014), Toronto, Canada (2016), and Monterrey, Mexico (2019).
The London Series is one of the events promoted by the Major League Baseball office to highlight the “globalization of baseball.
In its inaugural edition in 2019, the “rivalry” between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox was played in London. However, the London Series was canceled in 2020 and 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The venue, London Stadium, hosted the opening and closing ceremonies and track and field events of the 2012 London Olympics and is now home to English Premier League (EPL) side West Ham United. The stadium has been renovated to accommodate baseball games, and the rectangular stadium has been transformed into a baseball field.
A total of 112,227 fans attended the London series, down from 118,718 four years ago, but it was considered a success in terms of box office.
However, given that Americans living in the U.K. filled the stands, it’s hard to say whether it had the “European fan influx effect” that the organizers were aiming for.