by Michael Allen McCormick

Created on: April 05, 2011

The beauty of baseball is best seen through the eyes of a child. The wonderment and awe of entering into a big league stadium, where the best of the best come to entertain you by either hitting a round ball squarely or by keeping this from happening.

There is a special magic in standing together with your hats against your hearts and hearing the national anthem followed by the bellow of the public address announcer saying, " Batter up!" The smell of the hot dogs, and the sounds of the fans cheering or booing in unison. The organ plays the charge, or it blares from a trumpet.

A vendor in the stands yells out Cotton Candy or Ice Cold Lemonade. Fans on one side of the bullpen may shout "Great taste", while the other side replies "Less Filling". Maybe the home team gets runners on base and the team mascot stands on the dugout and organizes the wave. Thousands of people rising and roaring and returning to their seats as it rolls around the circle of the ballpark, only to grow and get louder as more fans join in, or die out as the rally subsides.

It doesn't matter if you are high in the upper deck in the nosebleed section, where nobody ever hits a baseball. Bring your glove anyway. It's just a tradition. It's part of the gear. Glove, sunglasses, sunscreen, cap and binoculars. Maybe a transistor radio for the play by play.

Stomping your feet and clapping your hands and raising a hullabaloo until you scream yourself horse are all part of the great American pass-time.

The subtle nuances of baseball are so interesting. Watching the players go through there routines. Observing their own private superstitions about how they will keep a streak alive or how they will end a slump. Batters dig in and give it their own character in how they stand or how they move. Pitchers will stand on the mound and stare a batter down. Sizing him up. Glaring into his zone. Maybe they can intimidate him and dominate him after throwing the chin music of a brush back pitch high and inside. Maybe the batter will take it to another level of concentration and crush the next pitch.

Players will spit and scratch themselves. Base coaches will rarely stand inside the coaches box drawn onto the field for them to stay inside.

Maybe a fan will disturb the game and delay the game by running down onto the field. It's pure entertainment to watch security chase them down and wrestle them to the ground.

Perhaps the manager will argue a call and be ejected from the ballpark for his tantrum. The possibilities and probabilities of treasured memories happening at a baseball game are a mere certainty.

You got to have peanuts and Cracker Jacks for the middle of the seventh inning when everybody sings Take Me Out to the Ballgame.  This is almost a religious experience that will give goosebumps to the least sports minded individual.

The Ken Burns Baseball series is such a wonderful documentary on how baseball has been infused into American culture. Baseball has taken us through wars and crossed color barriers and brought people together in spirit and joy for well over a century. Baseball is a sport in which you don't have to be over 6ft tall or have a massive hulk of a body to excel at it.

Baseball has a natural symmetry and rhythm that sets it apart from other sports. As the comedian George Carlin said, " It's all about coming home. " The goal in baseball is a friendly goal, home is the goal. That is the ultimate beauty of baseball. Sending the memories of baseball HOME with a child.

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