If you build it, he will come.

You couldn’t help but get all Kevin Costner-ish, complete with misty eyes and big, square, American-style chin, when you laid eyes on the surreal images coming out of the Sydney Cricket Ground on Monday morning.

There it was: a baseball diamond on the hallowed turf, right in front of the finally completed Noble-Bradman grandstand, right over the bowler’s arm for the cricket devotees out there, ahead of this weekend’s Major League Baseball double-header between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks.

In very general terms, Australian sports fans probably think as much about Costner in Field of Dreams as the Dodgers and Diamondbacks when it comes to baseball.

Actually, they probably think as much about Charlie Sheen as Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn in Major League as Dodger’s superstar pitcher Clayton Kershaw, who could build his own Noble-Bradman Stand given his present deal with the Dodgers is worth $238 million.

So how will Sydney fans take to this latest "big sporting event" about to come to Sin City?

When someone whispers “If you build it, he will come”, they may as well be talking about the fickle Sydney sports fan, and whether or not he or she could be bothered turning up to a major sporting event.

With the debate about NRL crowd figures only just starting to simmer down from last week, let’s not spark it up again over whether Sydneysiders will attend baseball.

At this stage of proceedings, tickets to the Dodgers-Razorbacks games on Saturday and Sunday have almost been completely snapped up.

Only the expensive seats remain, although there are many remaining for reasonably priced tickets to exhibition games between Team Australia and the two sides on Thursday and Friday.

Ignorance should not devalue the importance of the double-header for Sydney, especially as it attempts to compete with Melbourne - the self-proclaimed centre of the sporting universe, as anyone from the other side of the Murray River will readily tell you - for 24-carat sporting events.

Over the past two decades, the Victorian government has played NSW off a break when it comes to major events, with the exception of that minor sports carnival called the Sydney Olympics, of course.

But the tide is turning, ever so slowly.

Late last year, Football Federation Australia boss David Gallop squeezed more money out of the NSW government's major events arm, Destination NSW, and the $3.5 million that materialised helped bring Manchester United to ANZ Stadium to play an A-League All-Stars match.

On that occasion, about 19 per cent of the tickets sold came from outside of NSW. About 35 per cent of the tickets sold for this weekend’s double-headers are for interstaters.

It remains unclear how much Destination NSW has set aside to entice the Dodgers and Diamondbacks, but it comes after seven years of lobbying and plotting from promoter Jason Moore to make the deal happen.

Apparently, his task became much easier when there was a change of government at state level, with Premier Barry O’Farrell and the Liberal party taking a broader view of the importance of major events.

Indeed, the battle for major sporting content is on.

ANZ Stadium will host the Asian Cup final in January next year, although the MCG will host the final of the Cricket World Cup two months later.

It’s been said that the Victorian government went in hard for this weekend’s MLB matches, although others might say the all-powerful AFL would have objected to the MCG's hallowed turf being dug up in just the second week of the season.

When it comes to major events, Melbourne has continually spruiked its spring racing carnival as the jewel in the crown.

Sydney believes the Empire is striking back with The Championships next month, although there are already concerns about how much of the $10 million from the O'Farrell government is being used to promote it as “an event” as much as two days of glorious racing at Royal Randwick.

There is also growing talk of politics between the ATC and Racing NSW, who conceived The Championships, stymying its promotion.

Doubtless, The Championships represent Sydney’s best chance of enticing large crowds to the revamped Randwick, for quality racing in time-honoured events, although it will take as much as five years to really gauge its success.

A major cultural change needs to occur.

Sin City needs big sporting events. And Sin City needs to get behind them.

If Kevin Costner can do it, so can we.