Learn it. Love it. Lacrosse: hockey's older brother--rich in history, with an upstart pro league bent on delivering a game fans of all sports will embrace--is worth getting to know. (Know It All).

Try this trick question on your friends: What's the original national sport of Canada? Hint: It helped make Wayne Gretzky "great."

The answer? Lacrosse, the national sport from 1859 until 1994. (It's now the national summer sport; hockey is the official winter sport.) The best hockey player of all time credits lacrosse for fostering the skills that made him The Great One. Many other NHL stars skate with skills they forged in box lacrosse, played in hockey rinks where the ice has melted in the summer.

North America's first-born sport, conceived in the 15th century by Native Americans, is entering a new heyday with the rise of Major League Lacrosse, a six-team professional outdoor league in the northeastern United States. MLL, with the best players in the world on its rosters, began its third season May 31 and, not wanting to rush its growth, is plotting a West Coast expansion for 2005.

"This is a game that has history. It has culture. And the fans are ravenous for it," says MLL founder Jake Steinfeld, best known as the CEO of Body by Jake Enterprises. "We have a product that's been around since before baseball, and here's an opportunity to really make this thing work."

According to U.S. Lacrosse, about 300,000 people participate nationally on an organized level, and that number is growing by 10 to 15 percent each year. MLL hopes to seize upon that grass-roots activity, and it has broken through with a corporate partnership with ESPN, which will broadcast the MLL Game of the Week for the next two seasons.

MLL has tweaked the ancient game to cater to a 21st-century audience. As if hard-rubber balls whizzing around at 90 to 100 mph while bodies crash into each other was not enough, MLL adds rocket fuel with a 45-second shot clock plus the high-scoring element of a 2-point shot.

"We captured everything that we wanted to capture--a fast pace, high speed, hitting, lots of scoring--and the fans got into it," Steinfeld says. "We found out very early that they loved the product."