Baseball is simply a matter of rooting faithfully (and in most cases and for most seasons, quite hopelessly) for the cherished hometown nine. Long-favored stars retire, and quaint ballparks are replaced by shopping mall stadia; high-priced free agents come and go, and popular performers are traded away; but it all matters very little in the long haul. Loyalty in baseball is to a logo and a uniform alone. We may grouse, groan, and whine, but we seldom ever trade in our favorite team for a new one.

Such loyalties are formed early in life and often have most to do with simple geography. They supersede and survive the ebb and flow of individual seasons, as well as the comings and goings of individual star players (one reason why free agency and its constant player shuffling has little negative impact on the game's continuing popularity). Part of the baggage is attachment to a particular ballpark and thus a deep connection with the events played out in that park over the course of many childhood summers. Ernie Banks will always move gracefully in the Wrigley Field sunshine; a revamped Yankee Stadium still houses palpable ghosts of Mantle, Maris, Ruth, and the stoic Yankee Clipper. It was the loss of Ebbets Field itself, and not just the Brooklyn nameplate alone, which disenfranchised all those former Flatbush Faithful, whose own adult lives eventually took them to such distant corners of the nation. The Tigers would no longer quite be the Tigers without Tiger Stadium; nor would the Bosox seem legitimate anywhere but on the hallowed turf of ancient Fenway Park.

Baseball memories are thus highly personalized matters. As a nation of ballpark addicts, we often mark the mundane events of our lives, especially our early lives, against a nostalgic baseball backdrop. Each fan is intimately attached to the ballplaying styles and diamond events of his youth. This explains the prevalent belief in a baseball "golden age," that period when we were young and carefree, when our heroes were above any taint, when the hitters were more muscular, the pitchers more relentlessly unhittable, the infield and outfield play far more pleasingly aesthetic, and the ballplayers themselves much more spirited and dedicated. Our health, well-being, and very state of mind all seemed somehow inexorably bound up with the fortunes of a favored hometown team. We all see the sports world of our youth this way, through the rose-colored filter of our own fandom. And all big-league teams provide their fans with a gallery of irrepressible ballpark memories. Even relatively young franchises like the New York Mets are no exception to this universal baseball rule.

Football lures its legions of bloodthirsty fans with unrelenting violence. The pigskin game is spiced by the "corporate metaphor" of team play and individual sacrifice in the name of cohesive progress for the militaristic unit. Basketball has reached its current popularity through the appeal of the larger-than-life (quite literally) celebrity and fantasy superhero. Baseball's appeal, by contrast, has always rested firmly on the drama of the hometown team. We live and die with the summertime adventures of the Dodgers, the Cubbies, the Redlegs, or the Tigers. The quixotic fortunes of a local ball club, serving as our alter ego, provide us with lasting early lessons about the ebb and flow of a life in which sobering defeat always comes hard on the heels of almost any euphoric victory.

Thus while we have carbon copy "football fans" (of both NFL and collegiate variety) and MTV-generation basketball "hero worshippers" loyal to Air Jordan, Magic, Bird, Shaq, or Kobe, baseball's myriad followers come in two dozen or more species. There are Cub fans and Met fans and Yankee rooters and Tiger and Cardinal fanatics. Each inherits a colorful legacy passed down lovingly from generation to generation; each swoons summer after long summer over the ins and outs, ups and downs, pennant pursuits, and endless droughts of the favored hometown team.

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