Baseball on a scorchio Sunday

It’s been a scorchio Sunday and teams throughout Britain have been playing important play-off games on a picture perfect day.

What better way to bring the day to a close than with an evening of baseball.

You can sit in the garden as the evening cools down (hopefully) with a beer while listening to BBC 5 Live Sports Extra’s coverage of the game between the Giants and Padres. The show is scheduled to start at 21.00, with the first pitch coming five minutes later.

Alternatively, if you have wi-fi, a portable device and an MLB.com subscription you can enjoy any number of different games. Unfortunately, ESPN America is showing Little League games all evening once again, although they will be broadcasting the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball game (Red Sox at Yankees) as normal.  All times are in BST.

18.05. Baltimore at Detroit (Chen – Fister)
18.07. Texas at Toronto (Harrison – Alvarez)
18.10. Chicago Cubs at Cincinnati (Volstad – Latos)
18.35. LA Dodgers at Atlanta (Billingsley – Minor)
18.35. NY Mets at Washington (Hefner – Gonzalez)
19.05. Arizona at Houston (Kennedy – Galarraga)
19.10. Chicago White Sox at Kansas City (Quintana – Guthrie)
19.10. Philadelphia at Milwaukee (Kendrick – Wolf)
19.15. Pittsburgh at St. Louis (Karstens – Garcia)
20.10. Miami at Colorado (Johnson – Pomeranz)
20.35. Tampa Bay at LA Angels (Moore – Greinke)
21.05. Cleveland at Oakland (Masterson – Parker)
21.05. San Francisco at San Diego (Vogelsong – Richard) *BBC 5 Live Sports Extra
21.10. Minnesota at Seattle (Deduno – Beavan)

01.00. Boston at NY Yankees (Beckett – Kuroda) *ESPN America

Picking out one game from the list, I’d have to go for the series finale between the Rays and Angels. There’s no such thing as a ‘must win’ game on 19 August, with plenty of games – and twists and turns – still to come; however there’s no doubt that the Angels will see this as an important contest to win.

They’ve dropped the first three games of the series to the red-hot Rays and all have been devastating defeats. The first came with David Price shutting down the Angels’ offence and Dan Haren having another indifferent outing, lasting just 3.2 innings and lending weight to the theory that he’s not completely healthy.

The Angels would have been confident of bouncing back the next day with ace Jered Weaver on the mound, yet he was smashed for nine runs over three innings.  They then turned the tables on the Rays’ Alex Cobb by knocking him out of the game early yesterday (2.2 innings pitched, 8 earned runs conceded), only for C.J. Wilson to have a meltdown and for the Angels to see their 8-0 lead turn into a 10-8 loss.

L.A. made a big splash ahead of the trade deadline by acquiring Zack Greinke and he is tasked with salvaging a morale-boosting victory from the series today. It will not be easy though as the Rays will counter with Matt Moore, who has been outstanding of late.

All of these games are available to watch live via the MLB.TV subscription at MLB.com. BBC 5 Live Sports Extra can be found on digital radio, digital TV and on the BBC.co.uk website (coverage on the website is only available to UK residents).