Baseball can be a little bit like church in that a lot of the meaning is in its rituals. That’s how most fans endure the 162-game season, why a team can be out of the pennant race in May and people will still show up—it’s the rituals, the smells, the sounds, the memories linked to Cracker Jack and the seventh-inning stretch. It feels like sitting on your grandpa’s lap. Everything’s gonna be alright. For nine innings you feel safe. When we’re small, there are some sports we sign-up for, but baseball is something you inherit.

Baseball is as much or more about yesterday than today. That’s why sports like football and basketball have boat-raced it this century in terms of popularity. That’s why it is so generational, why its players and legends transcend generations, why its milestones and records are held in such reverence. The Grand Old Game is folklore, its names and moments etched on the cave walls of the American landscape. Names like “Shoeless” Joe Jackson. He hit .408 in 1911 as a rookie, setting a rookie record that still stands. There was really no good reason he was called Shoeless and it’s possible his legend is overblown, but he was by all accounts a country gentleman … and he could hit! Jackson’s 233 hits as a rookie set a record that lasted for 90 years until Ichiro tallied 242 in 2001. After 13 seasons Jackson’s career average was .356, all in the dead-ball era, and he struck out only 234 times in almost 5,000 at-bats. In 1919 he fanned but 10 times in 139 games. I never got to see Ted Williams or Joe DiMaggio play. That sucks. In 1941 Williams hit .406, and in the same season, with DiMaggio on first base, he hit a three-run homer to win the All-Star Game. Just the names Williams and DiMaggio make you almost want to bless yourself. HOF pitcher Bob Feller said of Ted Williams, “Trying to get a fastball by him is like trying to get a sunbeam past a rooster.” DiMaggio hit 361 home runs and struck out only 369 times in his career.

Yeah, ballplayers get put on pedestals. We put them there, it’s a human weakness. And while players get idol status, and records and statistics can become deadly serious, there’s always been an endearingly funny side of baseball—characters, wackiness, superstitions, mannerisms. It’s something only baseball has and only baseball fans appreciate. In the 1930s, Bill Veeck owned the St. Louis Browns, a team that often drew very few fans. Once, when a fan called to find out what time that day’s game started Veeck took the call and replied, “I don’t know, when can you get here.” Veeck was the weird uncle of the big leagues and he was always looking for an angle or an idea that was just crazy enough to bring people to the ballpark. Among Veeck’s ideas was Grandstand Managers Day, where fans could vote on in-game strategy by holding up placards.

The World Series starts tonight. I’ll be in church. I expect to see my ancestors, maybe DiMaggio, I’ll manage from the stands and root for the Dodgers. And, in a society where I easily could have received a skateboard and been hauled off to a monster truck rally, I’ll be thankful that someone gave me a glove and took me to the ballpark.