Baseball’s biggest names have been tasked with winning UK fans over to their sport this summer and they already have a fitting blueprint for success, as devoted converts to the Premier League.

The third running of Major League Baseball’s London Series will see the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies arrive at West Ham for two games in early June. 

These two old rivals are charged with growing the sport in Europe and selling out a 60,000-seat stadium - something none of their 30 clubs get close to back home but which was achieved in east London in both 2019 by the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, and last summer when the Chicago Cubs and St Louis Cardinals finally completed a series delayed three years by the pandemic.

While priority number one is gaining bragging rights in Europe against a division rival and erasing any memory of a turbulent 2023 campaign, a large section of the Mets locker room have an eye on the heroes that light up their clubhouse screens every Saturday morning.

Fearsome slugger Pete Alonso is capable of delivering baseballs beyond the fences of any stadium, never mind the slightly more snug ballpark he will enter in London, and his thoughts are locked on starring in the same city as a man born more than 5,000 miles from his native Tampa, Florida.

‘I’m really excited for London - Chelsea is my favorite football club,’ says Alonso. ‘Didier Drogba is my favorite. He’s done now but I think my favorite performance of his was against Bayern Munich in the 2012 Champions League final. The dude is an absolute savage.

‘It started in the 2006 World Cup watching him play for Ivory Coast. Chelsea was his club then and seeing him play, the dude is a very physical player. He’s also a guy that plays with power and grace. He plays football like an American football free safety.

‘I caught the bug in 2006, that World Cup. That inspired me to play a couple seasons of soccer.’

Joining Alonso in the Drogba fan club is his new manager at the Mets, Carlos Mendoza. The Venezuelan, who steps up to the top job this season after six years as an assistant coach across the East River with the Yankees, first fell for Real Madrid but has a soft spot for the Blues.

‘I used to follow soccer a lot, the Premier League, Drogba…’ says Mendoza, preparing for his second London Series after helping the Yankees win both games against the Red Sox in 2019. ‘It was those years - the good years. But then I was in a bit of a limbo in the Champions League when it was Real Madrid playing Chelsea, it was like, “who am I rooting for?”’

‘It would be pretty cool to get an opportunity to go there. Maybe do a stadium tour or something. When I went with the Yankees I wanted to do it, but we didn’t have time, but I wanted to go and see it.’

But blue isn’t the color on every wall of the Mets clubhouse, with plenty of hours to fill watching soccer in the mornings of their 162-game season.

Baseball’s strong Latin contingent bring La Liga to the major leagues - ‘especially in Venezuela and Colombia, those guys want to be a footballer before baseball, but if you put a bat in their hands they’re going to hit a ball 450ft, so it just works out,’ says Alonso, whose dream outside of baseball success is to watch fellow Florida resident Lionel Messi play.

‘I’m sure watching that guy play in person is like watching a wizard. This past World Cup was electric. Seeing one of the great ones do it like that was really special.’

And there’s a Premier League rivalry, thanks to pitcher Adam Ottavino, a Manchester United fan.

‘When the games are on and it’s between two teams we’re a fan of, we’ll get a little side action on or there’ll be some bragging rights for sure,’ says Ottavino, also a former member of the Yankees who has swapped the Bronx for Queens.

‘I grew up in New York City and there was a family on my block that were United fans and they got the games on VHS after the fact. When I was over at their house I would end up by osmosis learning more about the team. The team was a juggernaut at the time.

‘It was prime Fergie era - Giggs, Scholes, Beckham, Ronaldo coming around when he was young. I was living through that and you thought that was how it was always going to be, but everybody else got a lot stronger and the league got a lot more parity - especially Man City coming out of nowhere.’

The Mets can squeeze in a pair of off-days around a busy London schedule, and with influential voices Alonso and Mendoza around, it seems their first stop is Stamford Bridge.

‘I’d love to,’ says Alonso. ‘That would be one of those bucket list things for me, like seeing Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, London Bridge. 

I’d love to walk around Soho, try a proper Sunday roast. Fish and chips and hopefully you guys have a proper pint over there. After the game – not before.’

New York Mets will play Philadelphia Phillies in the MLB World Tour: London Series 2024 on June 8-9 at London Stadium. Tickets on sale at ticketmaster.co.uk/MLB