There’s a longstanding rumor that George W. Bush (who used to own the Texas Rangers) is using the presidency of the United States as a springboard to his dream job – Commissioner of Major League Baseball. If that rumor isn’t true, and Bush hasn’t been considering a position atop MLB, he might want to give it a second thought. This week came reports that baseball commissioner Bud Selig paid himself $14.5 million last year. That number caught a lot of people off guard. No doubt it caught Bush’s attention – Selig’s salary is more than 36 times what Bush makes as leader of the free world.

The revelation that Selig, the guy who just a few years ago went before Congress and claimed that his sport was in financial crisis, is paid like a king was cause for snickering in some parts. But more practical minds were quick to point out that Selig’s salary wasn’t out of line for a guy who has led baseball to a level of prosperity it’s never experienced.

If you weren’t paying attention, this winter the league announced that it was richer than ever before. Even baseball’s small market teams are making money, thanks to revenue sharing. To celebrate their wealth, this January and February team owners spent lavishly on free agents, one of whom couldn’t catch (Alfonso Soriano), one who is getting fat (Carlos Lee) and one who just isn’t that good (Gil Meche). Those three guys alone got $291 million.

Want more proof that baseball is doing just fine? This spring, attendance at Cactus League and Grapefruit League games was 3,421,055, surpassing the previous record set in 2005 by 16,000. That’s 3.5 million people who paid anywhere from $7-$25 a ticket to see games that didn’t count.

Baseball is indeed back. But, really, it never went away. The sport’s popularity waned in the mid 90’s after a work stoppage caused the cancellation of the 1994 World Series, only to be resuscitated by the steroid-fueled and now despised Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. But despite that small blip on the radar, baseball has remained at the forefront of American sporting culture. Sure, football is the current king of the hill and NASCAR (God help us) is growing more popular everyday, but baseball continues to be the sport of the people and the sport of presidents.

So what is the secret to baseball’s success? It sure as hell isn’t the action. If we’re being honest here, I think we can all agree that baseball isn’t the most exciting sport. Ironically, ice hockey, which is dying a slow death in the United States, is by far the fastest and hardest hitting game. Soccer, which has yet to really catch on here, probably comes in second. Then football and basketball and then, just before cricket, there’s baseball.

Baseball can go minutes at a time without anything happening of any consequence. Players can go entire games without ever having to field their positions. It’s the only major American sport where players need something to chew on and spit out during games. As for the players themselves, while some are steroid-addled and muscular, others are, well, not. I think the portly and always entertaining John Kruk said it best when he told a female fan, “Lady, I’m no athlete, I’m a ballplayer.”

Where baseball succeeds, more than any other sport, is in constructing a compelling narrative. Sure, teams have gotten more savvy in their marketing and the new wild card playoff format has made the season more exciting for fans, but what’s really driven baseball’s renaissance are the storylines: The Red Sox overcoming their curse; the White Sox ending their near-century of losing; Barry Bonds racing the law in pursuit of breaking Hank Aaron’s record; Sammy Sosa forgetting how to speak English; the Yankees’ willingness to embrace the Evil Empire reputation and spend their way to the top – the list goes on and on.

Sports are like movies. Ice Hockey is a foreign film – trying to follow the puck is like trying to keep up with subtitles. Tennis is a Jane Austen flick – except when Serena Williams is playing, then it’s a funky Blaxploitation flick (can you dig the cat suit?). Basketball is suspense thriller – you don’t know how it’s going to end until the last five minutes. Football is an action movie – at its best, it’s a historical epic, like Braveheart or Gladiator. But more often than not it’s a Bruce Willis movie, like Die Hard 2.

And baseball? Baseball is a chick flick. There’s so much drama. The A-Rod/Derek Jeter relationship – once they were best buds, now the relationship has chilled. The hot and cold rapport between the fans and their favorite/most despised players – they boo Mike Schmidt, they cheer Mike Schmidt, they boo Mike Schmidt. The ‘will they-won’t they’ tension that surrounds teams on the cusp of finally ending their championship droughts (This is the Phillies’ year, right? RIGHT?).

But it’s more than just the drama. It’s the sentiment. You can’t help but feel like you’re part of something special when you walk out of the tunnel at Fenway Park and see the perfectly manicured grass, smell the roasted peanuts and feel your shoes sticking to the floor, tacky from spilled beer. What’s more, baseball is tradition. Dads go to games with their sons because that’s what their fathers did with them. The best scene from City Slickers (other than every scene involving Jack Palance) finds Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern and Bruno Kirby standing around trying to explain to a woman why talking about baseball is better than talking about …you know…whatever it is that women talk about. Stern’s character Phil says, “You’re right, I suppose. I guess, I mean it is childish, but when I was about 18 and my dad and I couldn’t communicate about anything at all, we could still talk about baseball. That was real.” Awww.

Here’s the secret to baseball’s success, the secret that nobody’s willing to talk about: Dudes love chick flicks. Except that we call them buddy movies. But let’s face it, you replace Stern and Kirby with Meg Ryan and move the set from the Midwestern plains to Manhattan and all of a sudden City Slickers looks a whole lot like When Harry Met Sally.

Think about it. All the best baseball movies are chick flicks. In Bull Durham, Susan Sarandon plays a minor league groupie who has to decide between the new rookie stud (Tim Robbins) and an aging catcher (Kevin Costner). In Major League, Rene Russo has to decide between her uptown fiancé and yet another aging catcher, this time played by Tom Berenger. And then there’s Field of Dreams, the mother of all baseball movie tear-jerkers, where Kevin Costner plays a farmer who is prompted by a mysterious voice to plow his corn and build a ball field in order to bring Shoeless Joe Jackson back from the dead. Here’s what Red, who posts on AOL’s The Fan House, had to say recently about Field of Dreams, which he thinks is the “best baseball film ever made.”

“Field’s got James Earl Jones and the ‘people will come speech’ and that scene at the end when he has a catch with his dad and I start punching myself in the nuts so that anyone who enters the room while I’m watching it will figure I’m crying from repeated blows to the scrotum and not because I’m watching the goddam (sic) final scene of Field of Dreams.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Like any good chick flick, baseball makes grown men cry. Plus, it has crossover appeal. Men bring their wives. Women bring their daughters. And that, more than anything, is why baseball has stayed strong all these years. Like a good romantic comedy, it’s a timeless formula.

Coley Ward is a co-founder of the baseball fan site Umpbump.com. He grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and is a lifelong Phillies fan. Now an Atlanta resident, he attends Braves games because he loves baseball and enjoys shouting at Chipper Jones. For example, he’ll shout, “Hey Chipper, we’re going to Hooters after the game. Wanna come?” and “Hey Chipper, nice shades! Did you borrow those from Jose Canseco circa 1992?” http://umpbump.com