Sort of.

Maybe baseball doesn't naturally translate to the agenda of today's Republican Party, but there is little question that the way the game is played (as opposed to its business context or other aspects) is more akin to a classically liberal, lassiez-faire society than to any alternative.

Specifically, the game is primarily played as a series of individual contests: pitcher v. batter (even fielder v. ball), to which there is no alternative (a player can't pass his at-bat to a teammate). In these contexts, the participant virtually always benefits his team the most by achieving maximum individual success. A home run is always a better outcome than a single - full stop.

While there are certain situations in which a player is called to refrain from maximum individual success, such as a sacrifice bunt, those are marginal events (and the sabermetric scholarship has demonstrated the limited extent of their benefits). Truly, a baseball player promotes the good of (his team's) society by pursuing his own self-interest. When the baseball powers that be were inventing a false creation myth, they should have used Adam Smith rather than Abner Doubleday.

(I note that Fred Barnes argued the opposite in an old Weekly Standard article ($$). That in and of itself might becounted as evidence in favor of my argument. But also - to put it mildly - he didn't really engage the nature of the game. I think making fun of Fred Barnes is the definition of a worthy bipartisan initiative.)

Incidentally, much of what you need to know about baseball and politics, at least at the ownership level, is contained in the following statement: George W. Bush practically counted as a progressive as the Texas Rangers' owner. Showing foresight that he didn't bring to Washington, he consistently dissented from the owners' war on the players' union in the early 1990s that culminated in the strike that wiped out the 1994 World Series (he was only one of two owners to vote against requesting the resignation of commissioner Fay Vincent, the event which set the owners' course for war). And he was far from the most conservative owner when it came to politics, either. In fact, his predecessor as Rangers' owner, Eddie Chiles, was an oilman who doubled as a conservative radio commentator. His broadcasts always started with the words "I'm mad."