The history of Boston Red Sox's famous 100-year-old home stretches far beyond bats and Babe Ruth, says Brian Viner

As the new season begins, there has been a power shift from the East Coast, with TV deals, star names and big bucks going to LA

A group spear-headed by former basketball great Earvin "Magic" Johnson agreed to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team for a record $2bn, team owner Frank McCourt announced yesterday, capping a two-year drama that started with McCourt's divorce and wound its way through bankruptcy court.

Albert Pujols, widely regarded as the best player in baseball, has joined the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim on a 10-year contract reported to be worth $250m (around £160m).

The Last Word

The St. Louis Cardinals completed their magical comeback season by beating the Texas Rangers 6-2 in a deciding Game Seven to clinch the World Series last night.

Talks have collapsed on a proposed $200m (£123m) investment in the New York Mets from the hedge fund manager David Einhorn.

A baseball fan in Arizona narrowly escaped a 20ft plunge when he tried to catch a ball heading into the stands, less than a week after a father in Texas died in a similar accident.

ESPN America’s Michael Kim speaks to baseball expert Doug Glanville about the first half of the 2011 major league season.

The tragicomedy that is the Los Angeles Dodgers intensified yesterday as one of US sport's most famous franchises filed for bankruptcy – a last ploy by its heavily indebted owner to keep the team from being taken over entirely by Major League Baseball.

Major League Baseball's takeover of the Los Angeles Dodgers is but further proof of the tight, centralised control exerted by the American sports leagues – operating, in some respects almost literally, as laws unto themselves.

The Los Angeles Dodgers capitalised on San Francisco's error-strewn performance to hand last season's World Series champions a 2-1 defeat on Major League Baseball's opening day on Thursday.

When the Boston Red Sox' newly-signed outfielder Carl Crawford was presented to the media last December, he realised that he was without appropriately-coloured neckwear. Executive vice-president Sam Kennedy gave him a Liverpool tie, "thus merging Major League Baseball and Premier League", according to Peter Gammons, the respected baseball broadcaster.