After a year of Major League Baseball disappointments, many fans need a boost to get back into the swing of the season. A new exhibit at the Field Museum has just the solution.

“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball,” historian Jacques Barzun wrote in 1954.

“Baseball as America,” on display through July 20, explores the place of the national pastime in our society.

The exhibit portrays the sport as a national symbol, a microcosm of our country’s race relations and, most of all, a fan’s game.

Split into seven sections, the exhibit has artifacts on loan from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.

The first stop on the tour is Our National Spirit. It begins with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Green Light Letter,” which gave his approval to baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis for the game to go on during WWII. The section culminates with a picture of George W. Bush throwing his perfect strike to begin the first World Series game in New York after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Ideals and Injustices follows, highlighting the changing views of equality and opportunity in baseball. The No. 42 uniform Jackie Robinson wore when he broke the game’s color barrier is the section’s centerpiece.

The exhibit also showcases baseball’s emergence as an expanding corporate enterprise and the mediums that have explored baseball as a metaphor for America, including a reading of Ernest L. Thayer’s classic tale “Casey at Bat.”

There are even a few special treats for Chicagoans, such as a pair of former Cubs commentator Harry Caray’s trademark, thick-rimmed glasses and a ticket window from the original Comiskey Park.

“Baseball as America” provides a glimpse into the Hall of Fame for those who have not made it to Cooperstown. For those who have, it offers familiar and new memorabilia and a fun historical tour of a national pastime. nyou