Take it away and the whole enterprise collapses. Measurement Baseball performance, conveniently, can be measured by accepted standards. So many opportunities, so many runners thrown out. So many at bats with runners in scoring position, so many RBI's. Every kid on the block dreams of doing it.
Millions are in awe.
Names become permanent household fixtures. In politics the turf under measurement becomes spongy. When FDR arrived on the national political scene, a conservative patrician, and proceeded to take charge of the country for some 13 years, he won four consecutive presidential terms in a breeze. But he was not Babe Ruth pointing to the right field bleachers, stroking the ball there, and puffing around the bases, repeating his trademarked thing time after time, amassing the numbers in the record books. FDR was changing tactics daily, a broken field runner, skillfully eluding and befuddling his opposition at every turn.