The good news is that it’s a yes from the gigantic, fire-breathing spider. It is hard, after all, to imagine a World Cup without its finest tradition: 50 tons of decommissioned crane arranged into the shape of a monstrous arachnid, pumped full of highly flammable fuel and then stocked with hopefully less flammable D.J.s.

The spider will form the centerpiece of one of the cultural highlights of this fall’s World Cup in Qatar: a monthlong electronic music festival called the Arcadia Spectacular, staged just south of Doha and boasting what the promotional material calls an “electrifying atmosphere, extraordinary sculpted stages and the most immersive shows on earth.”

The idea has been modeled, fairly transparently, on England’s Glastonbury Festival — the spider itself has been a regular feature there for a decade — and, though it was only announced at a relatively late stage in preparations for the World Cup, organizers expect it to draw some 200,000 fans. Each and every one of them should be warned: They will, it turns out, be “mesmerized late into the night.”

The spider, though, will not be alone, which presumably can be a problem when you are a nightmarish metallic behemoth.

Richardson, who is 5-foot-9, never had his number retired for him by the Yankees, as Maris did for his No. 9. But the Yankees held a day to honor Richardson before his retirement in late 1966, a miserable year in which the team finished in last place for the first time since 1912.

It was also the final Yankees season for Maris, who hit only 13 home runs in his injury-marred pinstriped farewell. The Yankees did not hold a day that year for Maris, whom they would trade to St. Louis that off-season, but Maris took the time to commission a personalized gift for his friend.

“Roger, on his own, gave me a gold wristwatch,” Richardson said. “He had a friend who was a jeweler and had it made. It didn’t have 1-2-3-4 on the face; it had my No. 1 all the way around.”

The game on Richardson’s day — a Saturday afternoon with the Yankees 26½ games out of first place — drew a similar-sized crowd as the one for Maris’s record-breaking game on a Sunday five years earlier. It was Maris’s fourth game after hitting his 60th homer, and the meager attendance totals are hard to fathom today.

Maris took the day off against Baltimore on Sept. 27, 1961, just after tying Ruth. Only 7,500 people or so showed up that afternoon, and tickets for the three-game series against Boston on the final weekend were hardly in demand.

Those games, all with Maris one swing from breaking Ruth’s record, attracted 21,485 on Friday, 19,061 on Saturday and 23,154 on Sunday. The pennant race was over by then — the Yankees would host Cincinnati in the World Series opener that Wednesday — and, as every Yankees fan knows, there was doubt to the record’s legitimacy.

M.L.B. Commissioner Ford C. Frick had infamously declared that July that if it took a hitter longer than 154 games to eclipse Ruth, a “distinctive mark in the record books” would be affixed to the total. An asterisk came to symbolize the threat but was never actually applied.

Maris reached 61 homers in a 162-game schedule, which had never been used before. It was reasonable to think that others would also pass Ruth as the majors continued to expand and, presumably, the quality of pitching declined.

The Arcadia Spectacular is not the only music festival to be tacked on to Qatar 2022. There will be another at Al Wakrah, hosted by a company called MDLBEAST: you can tell it will be cutting-edge, because it’s in block capital letters and also has done away with some of its vowels, the most old-fashioned type of letter.

Those events, though, form only a part of the entertainment tapestry on offer to fans over the course of the tournament. There is Al Maha Island, with its ice-skating rink, its circus and its theme park; Lusail, the first-ever city built for a World Cup, where the central boulevard will feature “vehicle parades” and futuristic light shows; the Doha Corniche, four miles of roving street performers and “carnival atmosphere”; and, of course, the beach clubs, the fan park and, around every stadium for every game, the catchily named “Last Mile Cultural Activation.”

Qatar, in other words, has been as good as its word: It promised it would put on a show, and it has delivered. No expense has been spared. No stone has been left unturned. Its plans for what might be termed the tournament experience are grand, and ambitious, and spectacular.

It is just a shame that they are not, in any way, reflective of what fans want or need, and that they so betray such a fundamental misunderstanding — on the part of both the local organizers and, more damningly, FIFA itself — of what it is that makes a World Cup special.

It is not the soccer that makes the World Cup, not really. There are times that the games are breathtaking and nail-biting and heartbreaking, of course, when what happens on the field is etched on to the collective memory like a bright, lasting tattoo or an aching scar. But more often it is something more ethereal. The World Cup, at heart, is a feeling.

The most memorable thing about Russia, four years ago, for example, was not the French team that emerged victorious. It was not the Croatia side that carried a nation of five million to the cusp of ultimate glory. It was not even the sight of Germany, the reigning champion, crashing out in the group stage, or the baffling self-immolation of Spain.

No, what made Russia 2018 — particularly now, given all that has happened, given how unreal that month in the sun now feels — was Nikolskaya, the street in central Moscow that became a hub for fans from all over the world, full of flags and bunting and song. It was the sight of thousands upon thousands of Peruvians on the streets of Saransk, a red sash across their hearts. It was the sense that, even in a vast land of steppe and mountain and forest, you were never more than six feet from a Colombian.