Baseball.

Baseball is a story. We want it to be just a game where we catch and throw and hit and run. Grab a bat and ball and glove and maybe a hat creased to look like your favorite player. The field is level and might only be an open pasture where that line of bushes is a home run and the old oak is the foul pole. But baseball grows on you and works its magic because everyone can play everywhere.

A kid in Panama uses a tattered ball wrapped in tape and a cardboard box for a glove. He makes it to America and for 20 years throws one pitch, The Cutter, that no one can hit. Mariano Rivera is one greatest players to every play the game, yet somehow grows to be an even better person.

A shy kid from the hardscrabble plains of Oklahoma is thrust into the limelight of New York at age 19 sustained by pure natural ability. Mickey Mantle earns the harsh lights of fame but it costs him, and everyone who watched him play wonders how good he could have been without the booze and the 24/7 party life.

Pedro Martinez was a small man with an arm so quick no one could hit him for 10 years.

Ernie Banks missed seeing his Cubs win the Series, but somewhere he’s playin’ two.

The Jeter flip. Say Hey Willie Mays and The Catch. Ichiro and The Throw.

Stan The Man. Ty Cobb with spikes up high. Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, where have you gone? Ted Williams sees the stitches on a curve ball before launching it over the Green Monster. The Babe calls his shot, and Lou Gehrig is the luckiest man alive.

Our world may not be so grandiose. Thousands do not not cheer our every move or live vicariously through us. But out there in the early Spring with the air full of promise and passion, the baseball stories we make, make us.