Emerging from the shimmering heat in the desert outskirts of Dubai is an unfamiliar sight in the Middle East, a baseball field.

Now that it’s built, though, one question remains: Will the fans come?

That’s the challenge for the inaugural season of Baseball United, a four-team, monthlong contest that began Friday at the new Barry Larkin Field.

It’s named for an investor who is a former Cincinnati Reds shortstop, has the exact dimensions of the field at Yankee Stadium in New York, and is artificially turfed for the broiling sun of the United Arab Emirates.

The professional league seeks to draw on the sporting rivalry between India and Pakistan and their large number of expatriates in the Emirates. On Friday, the Mumbai Cobras played the Karachi Monarchs. Each team has Indian and Pakistan

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