Extended metaphor

[primeideal]

Following on from this: if the messy beginnings of Major League Baseball map onto the messy beginnings of the USA, then the baseball equivalent of Paul Revere is Tinker to Evers to Chance. Both are notable, but are perhaps even more famous than they "should" be due to some poetry/rhyming verse. Later appraisals (20th century) have been like "actually, the poem wasn't all that great, too much rhyming" and "these guys might not have made it to the Hall of Fame as individuals." But then re-revisionism in the last few years is like "Tinker, Evers, and Chance are noteworthy as more than the sum of their parts because they represent the many regional/cultural traditions [Californians doing their own thing out west, rural Midwest, Irish Catholics in the northeast] that fed into the modernization/"professionalization" of baseball in the 1900s decade" (I read a book about them recently) and "Paul Revere's Ride should be read in context, the context is that the Civil War was about to break out and people needed to be ready to fight for the Union/freedom again."