It's also irresistible. Hockey fans love it, the Hansons are cult heroes and some NHL stars are said to have committed the entire script to memory. It's obvious to anyone who pays attention that baseball and hockey have carved out vastly different spaces in the pop culture imagination. Backed by the full force of American myth-making, baseball has become the literate sport. It's not just bats and balls and millionaire sluggers scratching their privates on television.
Baseball is about philosophy and meditation and nostalgia.
And it can serve as a metaphor for just about anything. Well, it seems there's not much meditation or metaphor to be found in the Canadian game. But you will find lots of broken teeth, foul-mouthed prairie boys and loony goaltenders. Okay, this is a generalization. Baseball has served up its share of farce and foolishness.