It was as close to perfect as the Canadian Baseball League is ever going to get.

Baseball came back to London last night.

In fact, it came to Canada as the first Canada-only baseball league kicked off in London with the London Monarchs playing the Montreal Royales.

For the time being, all questions about whether the league will survive, about whether the fans will support the league, about where the money is going to come from, were forgotten.

Last night was about the birth of a baseball league and yet another opportunity for London to support a minor-league team.

It seemed the baseball gods where smiling down at the CBL. There was rain the day before the game and rain expected pretty much all weekend. But last night was almost picture-perfect.

All the CBL bigwigs were in attendance -- Tony Riviera, league chair; Jeff Mallett, managing partner in the league; Charlton Lui, CEO; and commissioner Ferguson Jenkins -- and national television carried the game to boot.

The Snowbirds did a flyover. There were fireworks and balloons and enough references to the event being historic to make you believe you were sitting in a history class.

The only thing that didn't work was Canadian star Michael Burgess's microphone. He had to suffer as it cut out during the Canadian national anthem.

With all the last-minute running-around being done by everyone, it was amazing more things didn't go wrong.

Riviera predicted a sellout. He said before the game all 5,400 seats were sold, but there were numerous empty seats. No doubt the crowd was ready for baseball.

It was nice to see Labatt Park as lively as it was.

As usual with this ball park, the field was in terrific shape. The crowd was into it, helped by the thunder sticks handed out to fans as they came into the park. It was a baseball atmosphere.

"This is awesome," Riviera said, continuing to glance around like an expectant father about to be told his baby was being delivered. It's been long in the delivery. Six years, in fact. That's when Riviera first began to believe a Canadian league was viable.

"Many millions," Riviera said when asked how much money it had cost to get this league off the ground. "Maybe $10 million, but even that figure isn't accurate because I'm not sure how much money has been spent."

Was it worth it?

"There are three types of people," Riviera said. "People that make things happen, people who watch things happens and people who ask 'what happened?' I think a lot of people will wonder what happened and how they missed out on it."

While most oddsmakers wouldn't give you good odds on the league surviving, only time will tell.

People like Riviera and Lui talk about the league as they would a family member.

Mallett, who is one of the eight principal owners of the San Francisco Giants, isn't shy about talking about why he's involved. He came on board three months ago.

"I've looked at the pros and cons of pro sports and there are a lot of cons. I honestly believe this can be a profitable, money-making business," he said. "I'm not a charity organization. I bought into the Giants as a lifestyle investment. That means it's the type of investment I'll leave to my kids. This, though, is a business.

"I like that it as an entity. I like the idea that the stadiums are low-cost or no cost. I get a feeling that this will be a quality product. The dollars made sense."

That from a self-made millionaire.

But on this night, the smell of money was secondary to the smell of hotdogs ($3.00), sausages ($3.75), hamburgers ($3.50), nachos ($3.25) and beer ($4.25 for 14 ounces), the sound of starter Todd Etler's fastball snapping into the glove of catcher James Rutherford and the thump of a Gamin Teague triple off the right-centrefield wall.

The smells and sounds of baseball.

For now that's enough.