01:00 AM EST on Sunday, April 2, 2006

By ART MARTONE
Journal Sports Editor

"Opening day -- or Opening Day. Depending on how you feel about it."

-- Jim Bouton, former major-league pitcher, in his book Ball Four

You know what's great about baseball? It makes no difference how you feel about it.

"No matter how it is that your mind works, baseball reaches out to you. If you're an emotional person, baseball asks for your heart. If you are a thinking [person] . . . baseball wants your opinion. Whether you are left-brain or right-brain, Type A or Type Z, whether your mind is bent toward mathematics or toward history or psychology or geometry, whether you are young or old, baseball has its way of asking for you."

-- Bill James, baseball researcher and author, in his book Historical Baseball Abstract

Baseball is the sport of poets. It's also the sport of stat geeks. It's a sport for hero-worshipers, and it's a sport for crusty individualists. It's a big tent, baseball is, and it needs to be; unlike every other sport, it truly has something for everyone.

"The essential definition of baseball is that [it] is a thing which welcomes and sustains our interest."

-- James

As we sit on the eve of another Red Sox opener -- the

Indians and White Sox officially start things off tonight at 8, and the Red Sox open tomorrow at 2 p.m. in Texas -- there are truths that are painful for baseball fans to admit. A Harris Poll taken last December indicates that professional football is the number-one spectator sport in America today; this is consistent with most such polls taken over the last two decades. The World Series, as an event, no longer generates the same widespread interest as the Super Bowl, or even the NCAA basketball tourmament.

It's not surprising. Baseball, unlike other sports, isn't suited for the big finish, the moment of truth when the season is decided on a large stage with the whole world watching. Other games are more suited for the mind-set of our modern-day society, the mind-set of instant gratification and resolution.

Baseball's moments of truth come daily, during the long and sometimes painstaking six-month journey from Game 1 to Game 162 (and, if a team has been successful, beyond). It's a sport that rewards -- and sometimes tests -- your patience, but one in which patience truly is a virtue.

Some were stunned, for instance, when the Red Sox discarded franchise icon Nomar Garciaparra at the trade deadline in 2004. But those who'd been watching knew Garciaparra's skill level, at least defensively, had deteriorated so drastically that the Sox concluded they couldn't win without a better-fielding shortstop.

It was difficult to accept, especially for those who get their baseball fix by watching ESPN highlights. All they saw were 10-second clips of Garciaparra throwing out runners from short left field, and ranging to his left to snare groundballs over the second-base bag . . . plays that almost any major-leaguer can make occasionally.

It's over the long haul, the day-to-day grind, where the truth is found.

And that's why baseball's not a sport best told through 10-second highlight clips. If it were, the inevitable 420-foot home run from Red Sox backup infielder Alex Cora sometime this year would convince us that Cora -- who averages six homers a season -- is a terrific power hitter.

"Baseball doesn't preach at us; baseball surrounds us."

-- James

The artistic among us have long been attracted to such a sport. The late A. Bartlett Giamatti, the former president of Yale who served for a year as baseball commissioner until his death in 1989, penned what is perhaps the most well-known ode to baseball, "The Green Fields of the Mind."

"The game begins in spring, when everything else begins again. . . ."

He's not the only one who sees bigger themes in baseball.

"Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona."

-- George F. Will, author

"Baseball? It's just a game -- as simple as a ball and a bat. Yet, [it's also] as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. It's a sport, business -- and sometimes even religion."

-- Ernie Harwell, longtime baseball radio announcer

"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem."

-- the late Saul Steinberg, an American artist frequently featured in The New Yorker

Phew.

But their feelings are legitimate. Just as legitimate as those who view baseball through a less-lofty prism.

"A hot dog at the ball park is better than steak at the Ritz."

-- the late actor Humphrey Bogart

"It ain't like football. You can't make up no trick plays."

-- Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra

"You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the . . . plate and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all."

-- Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver

A big tent? Any tent that has room for both Yogi Berra and Saul Steinberg is pretty big, indeed.

But that's the essense of baseball. In his essay, James wrote of how other disciplines "swat down our interest with self-righteousness and jargon, with demands that we dedicate ourselves to [their] field before we really understand anything about it." Not baseball. "Whoever we are, however we think, however old we are, wherever we live, whatever we like to do, baseball wants us -- and this is what makes baseball what it is."

Most New Englanders are Opening Day, not opening day, which makes this a special time of year. They invest a lot into baseball, and they get a lot back. For every Red Sox fan heartbroken because that cute Johnny Damon is no longer in center field, there's one who's delighted the job has been entrusted to Coco Crisp, six years younger, a lot less expensive, and with the potential to be a better player in a very short time. And they also know that those who fell in love with Johnny will probably fall in love with Coco pretty soon, too.

It all starts tomorrow (or tonight, to be completely accurate). So much will happen that we can't know. Players will get injured. Some will play worse than we expect. Some will play better. Controversies will erupt. A losing streak will trigger panic attacks; on radio talk shows, callers (and even some hosts) will proclaim they're "pulling the plug" on the season during a bad stretch in May or July.

It will be exciting. It will be nerve-wracking. It will be long, and sometimes boring, and always unpredictable.

And if you're a baseball fan, it will be wonderful.

"The other sports are just sports. Baseball is a love."

-- Bryant Gumbel, longtime sports announcer

No argument here.

GET IN THE GAME with real-time updates from tomorrow's Sox opener in Texas, plus photos, surveys and more, at:

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