Baseball already plays a prominent role in the book:
- Santiago admires and idolizes Joe DiMaggio
- Manolin, the boy, shows a similar reverence for Jolten' Joe and the Jankees
- Santiago teaches Manolin about "the baseball" just as he teaches him about fishing
- Manolin's eagerness to learn the art of fishing from the old man could be transposed as an eagerness to learn the art of playing baseball...
The Seed --
- sunflower seeds
- top seed / bottom seed
- the ball when hit hard and fast, with little or no arc (on the ground, line drive)
- the ball when pitched at high velocity
- the ball when thrown across the diamond
- sowing the seed of "a love for baseball" in the mind of the youth
- symbol of youth itself, a seed compared to the old hickory
The technical language surrounding fishing, boating, sailing, etc. will instead describe baseball equipment, tactics, fielding/hitting/throwing techniques, etc.
The Icarus/Daedalus archetype could also still apply, perhaps in the form of a hitter going the distance to break DiMaggio's hit streak record of 56 consecutive games and destroying himself (or his record) in the process.
Nature as presented in the typically modern/masculine/christian-european way, in the form of Man imposing his will upon the sea (discussed as being both feminine la Mar and masculine el Mar) and the battle of Man vs. Nature (with the multitudinous force of Nature getting the best of the heroic masculine individual) is now deconstructed and re-presented as human nature (i.e. errors) and the nature of the game (i.e. failure) and overcoming the odds through solidarity, cooperation, teamwork, ingenuity, imagination, experimentation, and guile.
