Baseball's Mystic Chords of Memory

National League baseball has just marked its 150th Opening Day. As plans to commemorate the centennial of American Independence took shape in the spring of 1876, a sport that more than any other would embody our national identity was formally organized by Chicago businessman William Hulbert. For fifteen decades since that first Opening Day in April, baseball has been the quintessential American game, and perhaps our country’s most powerful cultural export next to Hollywood.