By Jim K.

Baseball, so say the experts, is a dying sport.

Everyone knows baseball is trying to change itself into a fast, "exciting" sport like basketball or, I dunno, hockey, I guess. Baseball looks like a relic, best shelved in the Victorian wing of a museum. It lacks the speed of basketball and the violence of football. Hell, the players barely ever touch.

It also lacks the TV highlights. Is the prospect of yet another home run going to make you stop hitting on a girl at a bar or vacuuming your living room or clipping your toenails? Hell, no. Why look up? You've seen it all before: pitch, swing, pan to the outfield, cut to the victory lap. Home runs are not, in and of themselves, exciting.

Which is why baseball blew its wad in the 1998 season when Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa beat Roger Maris's home run record to a pulp. Good job, boys. Sluggers today are so juiced up on chemicals—excuse me, dietary supplements—they look more like professional wrestlers than outfielders. Once they broke that record, there was no going back. Or was there?

In my deluded, antiquated world, baseball rules. It's the ultimate summer game, slow like the south, peppered with mind-altering chemicals like alcohol and tobacco and the by-products in delicious hot dogs. Why would anyone want to pronounce baseball dead?

Unlike football or basketball or any of those lesser sports like soccer and lacrosse some people in this country attempt to shove down our throats (though I have high hopes for the women's professional football league), baseball is the least passive from a fan's perspective. A baseball game is nothing without the fans. And I don't mean that the fans necessarily sway the outcome of games, though oftentimes they do.

What I'm saying is that it's time for baseball to start respecting its fans, to start giving them a product that celebrates their dignity rather than playing to their most infantile wants. Then maybe we can make this selfish, sour country strong again.

The beauty of baseball is that by its very nature it runs counter to the current state of American culture. Instead of trying to transform baseball into a video game like the NFL or NBA, it's time for the sport to embrace its history, but not just in the endless prattling off of statistics and records. It's time to hold baseball up as an embodiment of the outdated, forgotten and misplaced ideals that helped build this nation.

Baseball requires patience. It doesn't use a clock. There's no way to know how long a game is going to last, so you may as well leave your watch at home and keep an eye on the seventh inning, when they quit serving beer. The game is crafted around long-term ideals. The games are slow, the seasons long, the roots of every organization into its farm system deep. You never know when a hell of a play is going to happen, so you'd better pay attention.

There are no penalties and no fouls; the law is handed down by umpires and no amount of whining is going to reverse a sentence. You don't look for penalty flags on the field, you don't count your star player's personal fouls, you don't wait around for a power play. Some people complain that umpires have too much power, but they're not the ones playing the game, they're merely calling the shots. And if you don't like it, too bad.

Baseball's loyalty is unflinching. How beautiful is it when a manager runs out onto the field to dispute a call? Everyone knows he's not going to change the outcome of a play, but he's sticking up for his players no matter what, even when one makes a bonehead play.

There's nothing individual about baseball. Each player only gets a few chances to help their team and no player can simply take over the game. It's rare that a pitcher throws a complete game anymore and even your best sluggers are only capable of generating a few RBI's in an afternoon.

Watching baseball brings you in touch with nature. I suppose you could say golf does, too, but golf's nature is a man-made backdrop. When you're sitting in the stands with thousands of other fans suffering in the heat you know the players are feeling it, too. Passing clouds are welcome and wind is watched carefully. Rain ruins it. It doesn't adapt well to the cold and neither should it.

Baseball is about beer and food and friends and family. The stands are full of mobile bartenders and vociferous concessionaires. How many other places can you pass a twenty dollar bill to a complete stranger without the slightest thought of losing your money? The food is real, old-fashioned and weird: taste e-freezes, red hot sausages, cotton candy. When was the last time you put peanuts in the shell on your shopping list?

Lastly, I'll stop short of announcing baseball as religious and merely say it's meditative. Lots of jerks say baseball is boring, but it's only boring to boring people. The fact that it's slower than everything else in your life makes it all the more precious. It slows your pulse down, relaxes you, makes you sit still for several hours and lose yourself in a silly, communal experience. It's medicine for modern life.

So how do we nurse baseball back to health?

It doesn't require much, just a little grooming. Bring back the 2-zip pitching duels. Shove those outfield walls back a few hundred feet and get the sluggers off their drugs. Shorten the damn season. I don't want to see a pitcher's breath in April or October. Figure out baseball's screwed-up finances until salaries are reasonable again, fans don't go broke at the ballpark, and players get rich staying with a particular organization instead of hopping from team to team like a south-of-the-border gun-for-hire.

In short, celebrate the fact that baseball is different. Don't try to make it America's #1 sport. Baseball has to be content to step aside, be patient and outlast all the other sports. It won't bring in the revenue of some others or attract all the international stars, but it will always be there, beating America's slow, patient pulse while turning a brave face to the future.