Nearly seven years’ worth of Saturday nights have passed since what was then London’s Olympic Stadium played host to an exhibition of British sporting magnificence – which lasted a good half-hour. On Saturday comes the precise reverse: a weekend of something even more un-British than winning: the Yanks are coming – to play the most alien sport of all.

In the 1980s, suborned by Channel 4, a sizeable minority of British sports followers became infatuated with that strange sport for sizeable people, American football. Basketball, being simple to organise and economical on space, has long been played in gyms and playgrounds. Ice hockey has maintained a niche, especially in Scotland. But the US’s “national pastime” has always struggled to penetrate a sea wall of bafflement and contempt.

Suddenly baseball is here, big-time. All this month workers have been reconfiguring the London Stadium pitch and erasing traces of its West Ham-ishness under a layer of artificial turf (French) and dirt (American) to create a plausible version of a serious ballpark. And at the weekend Major League Baseball’s two most resonant teams, the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, will be there to play not mere exhibitions but two regular-season renewals of their eternal rivalry.

The Yanks are parking their tanks on the lawn of the English summer, right in the midst of the cricket World Cup. Across town on Saturday, Australia and New Zealand will be at Lord’s; on Sunday England and India are at Edgbaston. Baseball, having nabbed the biggest stadium, will draw more for each game than both cricket matches combined. And this is part of a wider project of intended conquest.

Banners outside the London Stadium showing two of the players who will be in action at the weekend - Boston Red Sox left fielder J.D. Martinez and New York Yankees starting pitcher CC Sabathia. Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian

Already this season Major League Baseball has gone to Japan and Mexico. In 2014 there was an excursion to the Sydney Cricket Ground. Europe, however, is virgin territory. And, of course, London was first choice. “Its ability to absorb sport is practically insatiable,” says Charlie Hill, baseball’s vice-president of international development (and, it so happens, a Briton). Another visit – the St Louis Cardinals versus the Chicago Cubs – is already inked in for next year.

A London gridiron franchise remains a serious proposition since the schedule is the one skinny thing in the game – only eight guaranteed home fixtures. In baseball the equivalent figure is, gulp, 81. So unless baseball players learn to use Harry Potter’s floo powder instead of aeroplanes, a Major League team in London is unthinkable. (“Never say never,” says Hill, puckishly.)

But the workload does mean the Red Sox, who have surrendered two home games to make this happen, can be relatively relaxed about losing them.

It is not clear that making even these weekend breaks an annual event would be sustainable. It is considered vital the players have a great time; otherwise their famously powerful union will nix the project. And baseball has been far less successful than cricket in establishing itself as a major sport beyond its homeland: it has only really taken off in Japan, South Korea and a few Latin American pockets, including, deliciously, Cuba.

Muddy Ruel bats with Hank Gowdy catching during an exhibition game at Stamford Bridge in 1924. Photograph: Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images

The British attitude has long veered between two types of disdain: on the one hand, it’s seen as “glorified rounders” and thus unmanly; on the other, as gaudy, gimmicky and unsubtle. Tours of Britain by US stars playing exhibition games date back to 1874 – a specialist subject of Daniel Bloyce, an expert in sports sociology at the University of Chester. “The word that kept recurring in the press reports was ‘unscientific’. It was seen as a wham-bang event, inferior to cricket,” he says. “And even now, if you only see the highlights, it looks as though everyone’s just trying to hit home runs.” Baseball is actually far more profound than that, whereas cricket is now intent on copying all the gaudiness and gimmickry and none of the profundity.

Baseball has maintained a tenuous foothold in Britain. John Moores, the football pools tycoon, promoted it in the 1930s, presumably to try and offer his punters a summertime jackpot. And it gained some traction, especially in Liverpool and Hull. Welsh baseball, an intriguing hybrid of baseball and cricket, survives if it no longer thrives. And there is a British Baseball League, centred on the US expat-rich south-east, though alas my favourite team of the 80s, the Golders Green Sox, seem to have vanished.

Conversely, many of us who enjoyed the heady days of Freddie Laker’s cheap flights to the US learned to love the game over there. But apart from Danny Cox – born in Northampton – who pitched in two World Series for the Cardinals in the 80s, hardly any Brits have made the grade in the big leagues. Indeed, there have been very few Europeans, although Dutch-born Didi Gregorius should be on view this weekend as the Yankees’ shortstop.

Still, London does love novelty. And there will be plenty of that. Locals have been specially trained to act as at-seat hawkers (“Cold beer! … Peanuts! … Soda!”) in keeping with baseball tradition. The Washington Nationals’ naff home-game gimmick of a comic race between mascots dressed as the four Mount Rushmore presidents (“It’s Abe in front with George catching up …”) is being adapted for British consumption. The contenders, chosen in a vote I somehow missed, will be Winston Churchill, Henry VIII, Freddie Mercury and the Loch Ness Monster.

I might just choose that moment to try and chase down a half-decent hot dog.

Matthew Engel will be chairing a discussion on the cultural significance of baseball at the British Library on Friday night. For more information visit: www.bl.uk/events.