More: The Vanishing of Scale in an Over-the-Top Nation

4 Only Experts and Fanatics Need Apply

105 ihave been a New York Mets fan since roughly the age of eight. The team captured my imagination the day Anne Sentivan, my third grade teacher, convinced Frank Ritzer, the wonderful principal of Fielding School in Maplewood, New Jersey, to allow her to roll a huge, antiquated, cart-bound television into our classroom so we could watch the Mets tangle with the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles in the 1969 World Series. It was one of those boundary-blurring moments that students (at least when I was a kid) dream about—we were watching TV in class! I rushed home that week to catch the last innings of the weekday Series games. I was planted in front of the boxy Admiral television in our den when Cleon Jones caught Davey Johnson’s fly ball to cap the Mets’ “miracle” season. It will come as no surprise to my friends and family that for a few years, I sent Christmas cards to Mets players, coaches, and manager Gil Hodges, not thinking that some of them might celebrate Hanukkah, or be humanists. I selected Jones as my favorite player, and soon started trying to obtain Mets memorabilia. The list of souvenirs available to Mets fans in the early 1970s was downright paltry when compared to the slick detailed catalogs bulging with items available to today’s fan. Even the word souvenir has all but disappeared from our sports lexicon, replaced by the more urgent gear. A key chain, a chintzy rain slicker, a batting helmet (not fit for game action, said the warning on the underside of its brim, yet I never oNly experTS aNd FaNaTicS Need apply Four 106 — More — played a pick-up game without it), and the once again popular bobbing (now bobble) head doll all were contained on one semiglossy page of the Mets’ modest yearbook, which I dutifully ordered every year with financial assistance from my grandmother. High-powered marketing strategies never entered my mind as I waited in my room and on my porch for the yearbook to arrive. Operating as a Mets fan while living near Philadelphia for most of the past three decades has been a tricky endeavor. The area’s legion of Phillies supporters includes my beautiful wife, Sheila, who grew up in the city, and my equally beautiful son, Neil, whom she is quietly indoctrinating in the ways of the “Fightins.” Undeterred, I have over the years worn with pride assorted Mets hats, jerseys, and jackets, even when the team has performed poorly. Call it an attempt to teach my students you should stick with your friends when life isn’t going well. Wearing a Mets hat or jacket to a game in the early 1980s, when I was attending Temple University, rarely provoked a reaction. And it seemed as though there were just as many Mets fans as Phillies fans in the cavernous Veterans Stadium stands. The Phillies won the World Series in 1980 and the National League pennant in 1983, but didn’t perform particularly well again until 1993, when they unexpectedly made it to the Series, losing in six games to the Toronto Blue Jays. By then, I was working as the public relations manager for a Philadelphia cable channel, but still sported my Mets duds in the office and at the Vet. Even with the Phillies’ success, I’d hear only a few jibes. Maybe Phillies fans were taking pity on me; the Mets were a pretty sorry bunch in the 1990s. After another miraculous World Series win in 1986, the Mets made their fans wait more than a decade for another playoff appearance, and then made it back to the Series in 2000, when they were dispatched by the New York Yankees. Or maybe we were commiserating; their team finished last six times between 1983, when they lost to the Orioles in the Series, and 2000. But since then, the Phillies have finished no worse than third in the National League East. They’ve won four straight Eastern Division titles and defeated the Tampa Bay Rays in the 2008 World Series. The Phils were back in the Series the following year, but lost to the Yankees. Phillies fans are still fickle, but they’re happy these days. About midway through the 2009 season, Sheila and I took Neil to his first Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park. They drove up from — oNly experTS aNd FaNaTicS...