Red Sox Ready To Head Across The Pond For London Series Against Yankees
BOSTON (CBS) -- The Red Sox will conclude a three-game set with the Chicago White Sox at Fenway Park on Wednesday afternoon. After that, they begin quite the road trip.
Following their matinée against Chicago, the Red Sox will make their 3,269 mile trek across the pond to Merrie England. There, they'll square off against their biggest rival, the New York Yankees, for two games in Major League Baseball's first games to ever be played in Europe. If you're going to send two teams overseas, it may as well be two of the most marketable ones.
The transformation of London Stadium, usually the home of West Ham United, has been a three-week process that began on June 6. Boston is considered the home team in both games, and there was a little bit of a Fenway Park feel added to the stadium with a 16-foot wall in center field (for some reason, it's not green). The measurements are slightly smaller than your average MLB ballpark, measuring 385 feel to center field and 330 feet down both lines.
And as you can see, there is going to be a lot of foul territory when the Sox and Yanks do battle.
The stadium will also bring something that the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry has never experienced before. There wasn't enough time to install a grass field, so the Red Sox and Yankees will square off on artificial turf for the first time ever.
Boston manager Alex Cora said his players are prepared for all that goes with an intercontinental trip. After their flight, both teams will have to deal with the five-hour time difference. That could be interesting with the games set for 1 p.m. and 10 a.m. Eastern time. There will also be media obligations, MLB events and, of course, sightseeing along the way. It will be a busy few days for the Red Sox, but Cora says they are all very much looking forward to this trip.
"It's big. It's kind of bigger than I thought it would be. Watching TV and all this, it seems like everybody is looking forward to this," he said Wednesday, via MassLive.com. "But is it a tough stretch? Of course. It's not easy to go all the way over there during the season and then make adjustments and all that. Everybody agreed to it. And here we go. It should be fun. Different but fun."
When the Sox are done across the pond, they'll then travel 3,500 miles to Toronto for a three-game set with the Blue Jays, starting next Tuesday. After that, they'll head to Detroit for a three-game series before the All-Star break. It will be a long stretch for a team that hasn't been able to find their stride in 2019, but maybe this kind of lengthy trip will help bring the team together.
