The game has grown much stronger over the last 50 years. You no longer have exhausted pitchers in the last innings of a game. The current Atlanta Braves are a good example of this. They're clearly one of the great baseball teams. That's part of its Americanism.
Baseball has a strong sense of history.
Baseball fans are preoccupied with its history, with its records, its statistics - with who has done what, when, and where. All of that history is present in every game. There's a sense of continuousness to it that you don't quite find in other sports. But baseball goes slowly enough to allow history in. There's space for the viewer.