Coronavirus: Cubs-Cardinals London Series canceled; no international MLB games in 2020

It's starting to look as if there even is a Major League Baseball regular season that it won't start until mid-June at the earliest and possibly with a July 4 Opening Day due to the coronavirus. One of the marquee events of the 2020 schedule was to be the London Series scheduled for June 13-14 between the NL Central rival Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals, but to no surprise that was canceled on Wednesday by the league.

The Cubbies are currently +200 co-favorites at William Hill sportsbook with the Cincinnati Reds to win the NL Central, while the Cards are +240 to repeat. St. Louis was to be the home team for the London Series at West Ham's Olympic Stadium.

MLB scheduled the London Series for the first time last year when the New York Yankees "visited" the Boston Red Sox at London Stadium. Those were wildly entertaining offensive games with the Yankees winning the opener 17-13 and the finale 12-8. The first inning alone of the opener saw each team score six runs and it lasted 58 minutes and included 20 batters and 94 pitches.

Last month, MLB canceled games between the Padres and Diamondbacks from April 18-19 in Mexico City and between the Mets and Marlins from San Juan, Puerto Rico, from April 28-30.

The one marquee regular-season game left standing as of now is on Aug. 13 between the Yankees and White Sox from the "Field of Dreams" movie site in an 8,000-seat temporary stadium at the Dyersville (Iowa) farm. It was to be the first-ever MLB game in Iowa, but that game is likely in major jeopardy too. It was to be a White Sox home game … even though Iowa is largely Cubs country. 

In other coronavirus MLB news, the city of Toronto has banned all public events until at least June 30 and that presumably would rule out the Blue Jays playing at home before then. That is, unless the city would give special permission if the games were played without fans in attendance at Rogers Centre.