Well, the long wait is over and today marks the beginning of major league baseball's 2002 season. Hot stoves being dampered, old and sweet with sounds; the crack of a bat hitting a baseball and the thump of a ball hitting a catcher's glove can be heard all over this land.

"The Grand Old Game" in modern form traces its start to 1876 and the creation of the National League of Professional Baseball now enters its 127th season. "The Game" which opened in the same year that George Armstrong Custer met his fate at The Little Bighorn, goes back much further than that.

Contrary to popular belief, baseball was not invented in Cooperstown, a rustic village in upstate New York in 1839, nor did General Abner Doubleday, a Civil War hero and resident of Cooperstow, have anything to do with its creation. That claim is just a fable, a cozy and warm myth which fits nicely into a handful of other treasured American myths. Like the ride Paul Revere never completed. The flag Barbara Fritchie never waved. The hill Teddy Roosevelt never charged.

American baseball goes back a century before Doubleday to a game developed in the New England colonies. A mix of British cricket with its server (pitcher) and striker (batter) and British rounders with its bases.

When baseball's Cooperstown myth was foisted upon an innocent public in 1907, no one listened to old Henry Chadwick, baseball's first news reporter and creator of the boxscore and many baseball guides. Henry was brought to America from England as a 6-month-old infant and learned his English well, albeit Brooklyn, New York style, where his family settled. He scoffed at the idea of Cooperstown and Doubleday. Henry had a simple solution and much more eloquent way of describing the origin of the game. "Baseball had no faddah, it jus growed." Amen!

From the 1730s and Massachusetts ball, town ball swept the northeast, refined in the 1840s as New York ball, with nine players on each side, nine inning games and balls and strikes factored in. The game, (our game) has survived every American war, struggled through the Great Depression, weathered a players strike in 1994 that canceled the first World Series in 90 years, yet always the game survives.

From a seat at the ballpark or from one's living room chair, watching a game on television, the game appears easy to play, but that is merely an illusion. It is an extraordinary game played by men of ordinary size. It is the only game in which the defense controls the ball. It is the only game not ruled by a clock, but measured in outs and innings. To millions of onlookers, 300 is just another number. Ah, but to baseball players and fans, 300 is a magic number, a symbol of excellence. A player whose lifetime batting average reaches, or exceeds, 300 is a likely candidate for Hall of Fame recognition, yet that same man has failed in seven of every 10 at bats. The degree of difficulty in making solid contact with a round bat, swinging at a baseball is, to say the least, not easy.

From a pitcher standing 60 feet 6 inches away from a batter, a baseball is thrown toward home plate at speeds routinely measured at 90-100 miles per hour. A batter in a fraction of a second must make a decision to swing, or let the ball pass by. Too many solid connections and that pitcher is on his way back to the minor leagues, or back to his hometown. Too few solid connections and a batter shares the pitcher's fate.

It is a game that has lifted farm boys, coal miners, factory workers and even schoolboys and made them national heroes greeted by presidents. Some of those heroes have risen to legend status on major league diamonds and are still remembered over 100 years later. Perhaps the very fact that the game is so difficult to master has made it America's National Pastime.

"Our Game" begins each year, with the first signs of spring and ends each year in autumn's chill, renewing itself again and again. Somehow, our heroes are forever young and strong; we fans grow old, but our spark for the game never dies.

Still played today by young boys for fun as it was in the beginning, and by young men for a most rewarding living, the game goes on. Say what you will, baseball is many things to many people, but it is the one last and dear link with our past. So, "Let's play ball."

Postscript: This story marks the 100th piece published in the Register under the by-line "Parker's Pen." I'm as proud of hitting the century mark as was Barry Bonds in hitting his 73 home runs last season.

Ev Parker can be reached at evparker@starband.net