The modern version of that myth must be baseball, the explanation for spring and summer, the sport most associated with hope and renewal. Football and basketball, overlapping as they do, are the outdoor and indoor compensations for fall and winter, the time of no baseball. Neither has a pre-season rivaling the spring training season of baseball. Neither has a post-season championship to rival that of the World series. Both football and basketball are regulated by the clock.
Baseball has no such time limit.
Hope and renewal spring forth from baseball's pleasures of repetition and timelessness. The pitcher throws to first to keep a runner close as often as he wants. The batter steps in and out of the batter's box as often as he wants. These repetitions are tolerated, even pleasurable as part of the overall strategy of the game, because of the timelessness of the sport. I would even relate the timelessness of baseball to the ultimate goal of modernism.