I am a baseball fan. A true fan. Not some SABRmetrician who thinks that baseball is best appreciated by statistical analysis. Nay, I am a fan of the other sort- baseball as mystical poetry.

Baseball has sounds and smells. It is tactile- the feel of leather and wood and horsehide against callused hands. Cold beer and a hot dog on a warm July night. Bronx cheers and spontaneous prayers.

And if baseball is a poem, Cooperstown is its Stratford-upon-Avon.