This stupendous accomplishment also means that six times out of 10 he didn't make it. And no one has done even that well in 60 years. If most of us did our job well four times out of 10, we'd be looking for work. That's how hard this game really is. Both Giamatti and Updike understood the Odyssean, mythic aspects of the game, myth after all being the boiling down of universal experience.
Baseball is all about life's journeys and one's unceasing efforts to return to where one began.
This is one reason I've always thought baseball, more than any other sport, is an apt parallel for psychoanalysis. Both require coeur -age, a concept based in the heart. Both are solo journeys fortified by teamwork that one draws upon, but ultimately must leave behind, to go forward alone. And with years of repetition, infinite pauses, brimming silences, cycles of time-outs, ample opportunity to test, rest, muse, and reconsider, one person, on life's field, can get back to the beginning and renew. Baseball has appealed to me for many other reasons, too.