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Paul Goldschmidt hails the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunity to play baseball in London with the St. Louis Cardinals facing big rival Chicago Cubs in two games at London Stadium in June
- The Cardinals will play two games against the Cubs in June in London in 2023
- The London stadium retained baseball in 2019, but the game has yet to return
- Cardinals’ Paul Goldschmidt is relishing the chance to cross the pond
- He says that playing abroad is ‘a memory we will have for the rest of our lives’
- Click here for the latest international sports news from DailyMail.com
Major League Baseball star Paul Goldschmidt hailed next summer’s London Series as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ moment as he prepares to take America’s pastime across the pond.
Goldschmidt’s St. Louis Cardinals will take on their fierce rivals, the Chicago Cubs, in June at London Stadium in a two-game series, three years after their initial matchup was canceled due to the Covid pandemic and four years since the first MLB games in London. between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.
The 35-year-old is the leader of the Cardinals’ clubhouse, fresh off winning his first National League MVP award two weeks ago.
Paul Goldschmidt is enjoying a trip to London next June when the Cardinals take on the Cubs.
Goldschmidt said the match against such big opponents in London will be “once in a lifetime”.
And as a 12-year veteran who has played in more than 1,600 career games, Goldschmidt is excited by the prospect of a whole new arena to showcase a storied rivalry.
“I’m very excited to get there,” Goldschmidt said. “I had the opportunity when I was with the Arizona Diamondbacks to play in Australia (in 2014) and it was really cool. It’s something that doesn’t happen every year, it’s going to be great – the fans are going to be so excited and we love it when they’re at the game with the energy and the adrenaline in the stadium.
With us playing 162 games in a season, sometimes these games can feel the same, so there will be that adrenaline rush for us.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime moment for us, we get to go and play where baseball isn’t normally played, in a football stadium where everything is different.
“We love games where there are a lot of people and there is energy. It doesn’t happen in all games.
The Cubs and Cardinals make up one of America’s bitterest rivalries. Their meetings in London will be the 2,494 and 2,495 since their origins back in the late 19th century, but they will be the first to take place on foreign soil.
“In America it’s one of the most storied rivalries in any sport,” said Goldschmidt, who will start his fifth season in a Cardinals uniform in March after being traded from Arizona in December 2018. “It’s been going on for a long time”. and the fan bases are so close.
“Many of these (rival) fans live next door to each other, in the same city or on the same street, even family members support different teams.
“It’s always a different atmosphere when we play the Cubs, both franchises have been around for over 100 years and you have great grandparents, grandparents, babies, kids rooting for them, it’s what we do and it’s a lot of fun to be a part of.” of that.
‘My wife and I came to London in 2014 on vacation, we went to a Chelsea-Arsenal match. It was very similar: everything was focused on the game that day, just like in Chicago and St Louis.
It will be the second MLB game to be held at London Stadium, but the first since 2019.
Goldschmidt said that playing abroad is “a memory that we will have for the rest of our lives.”
The Yankees-Red Sox series in 2019 was marked by a run-scoring boom, with the Yankees winning 17-13 and 12-8 in front of nearly 60,000 fans each game, the highest attendance in MLB since 2003.
The success of the series led to the formation of a strategic partnership in May between MLB and the City of London, with games to be held at the site of the 2012 Olympic Games in 2023, 2024 and 2026.
And Goldschmidt looks to take advantage of his trip to a favorable offensive environment.
“I remember the ball was flying,” he said of the 2019 series. “The scores were really high, so the hitters liked it and the pitchers didn’t. It seemed like a really cool experience, everyone spoke highly of it.
‘When you have that atmosphere and energy, it helps you take your game to the next level.
‘This is something we may never do again. Sports games happen throughout the year, but this is something very rare for us, and a memory that we will have for the rest of our lives.
The St. Louis Cardinals will play the Chicago Cubs in the MLB World Tour: London Series 2023 from June 24-25 at London Stadium. Tickets go on sale December 6, 2022 at 10 am www.ticketmaster.co.uk/mlb