“Beyond a Coors Field game,” LeMahieu said, referring to the high-scoring environment at the baseball stadium in high-altitude Denver. “It was like something I’ve never been a part of.”
For this series, M.L.B. pulled out all the stops: the managers of both teams, Alex Cora of the Red Sox and Aaron Boone of the Yankees, watched the famed changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace on Friday morning; a reception for both teams was held at the Tower of London on Friday night; and the mascot race during Saturday’s game featured the rocker Freddie Mercury, Winston Churchill, King Henry VIII and the Loch Ness Monster. (Mercury won, by the way.)
Before the game, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, who is American, received gifts from both teams during their clubhouse visits and were on the field for the ceremonial first pitch.
The Yankees gave the royal couple a team cap and a baby sized pinstriped jersey with their son’s name, Archie, on the back. Markle, who has been spotted wearing Yankees caps in the past, grinned and Prince Harry joked that it was a better gift than what they received from the Red Sox.
“He said if we win he was going to let the baby wear the shirt,” Yankees shortstop Didi Gregorius said. “So I hope he remembers that.”
So much about baseball and its marathon 162-game regular season is about routine. A lot about this trip has not been: two days off before the weekend’s games, a seven-hour flight, a five-hour time difference, both teams wearing their home jerseys, announcements explaining the rules of the sport during the game, playing on a makeshift baseball field built at a soccer stadium.
“It breaks up the monotony,” Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman said in recent days. “It adds a lot more to the table in terms of travel and off-day issues and all that stuff. But when you take the positives and the negatives, our entire organization feels like this is a great opportunity and a real positive to be a part of something unique and different and special.”