Sports is one of those areas of life that seem to demand a strong response; people are either fans in the true sense of that word (that is, fanatical) or else they just plain hate it.

Then of course, within the realm of sports are the specific areas of interest. Baseball fans may care absolutely nothing for football or hockey, or you may be the consummate sports fan and love everything, even bowling on TV. Well, you know - it takes all kinds.

It intrigues me that one sport, baseball, is able to command an almost mythical aura around it more so than most sports.

The game invites analysis by mathematicians with its myriad of statistics for virtually everything that happens on the field, not to mention its elegant symmetry, and the fascination for averages that true ball fanatics really go in for and memorize (batting averages, pitching averages, RBIs, and on and on).

Back to its mythical aura, though; this is assisted by incredible accomplishments by certain players. Just recently, as every ball fan will know, Barry Bonds broke the record most fans long believed to be unbreakable, namely Hank Aaron's home run record. (Well, the fact that a man set the record to begin with invites the possibility that it can be broken, as Wayne Gretzky has ably demonstrated).

Once Bonds stops firing home runs and hangs up his cleats for good, there will be a new mark that will likely stand for a while before someone else breaks it. Of course, there's already a controversy about his record, seeing as he may have had the assistance of steroids for part of that record. If this was the Olympics instead of pro baseball, that wouldn't even be a question - the record would not count, and he would not be playing.

The thing is, it only takes a misty-eyed story like "Field of Dreams" with Kevin Costner (based on the stories of Canadian writer W.P. Kinsella) to restore the sentimental feeling in the hearts of ball fans that this is truly a great game.

It was with interest I recently read a book called, Me and DiMaggio, which was by New York Times book reviewer (and ball fan) Christopher Lehmann-Haupt. He spent a whole year following pro baseball, going from park to park, talking to as many players and managers and journalists as he could in that time, including past heroes of the game like the Yankee Clipper, Joe DiMaggio. It was interesting because in his own way, the author was able to see there wasn't really a mythical aura around the game, just ordinary humans on the field and in the owners' boxes and in the press box, all concerned with the game and the season.

Was he still a fan at the end? Yes he was, and a true story about DiMaggio that hooked him in to baseball in the first place is woven throughout with more details that came out about this particularly famous game well, you'd have to read it to know what I mean, but in its way, it kind of both peeled back and maintained somewhat the mythical status of the game.

To me, the best speech ever given about baseball was by James Earl Jones in the movie Field of Dreams, as he describes why it is fans will inexplicably find their way once again to the ball diamond to see players of old play the game. You don't quite get that feeling when you watch the Jays on TV - but sitting in Tom Laing Park and watching the Beavers, or at one of the diamonds in Jubilee Park to watch the Youngfellows girls or Midget Beavers or EnCana Oilers play, well, that comes pretty close. After all, these are our local kids, living out their dreams.