5 ideas
Baseball measures time in outs, not minutes, so an inning cannot end until the defense records three outs. A team that keeps hitting could in principle play forever, which lets the game suspend ordinary time. For the fan, the game becomes a refuge where time stops rather than a contest against the clock.
Long-time fans carry a private mental ballpark where remembered plays, players and games can be replayed and recombined at will. A game's slow, discrete, repeatable units, such as a pitch, a swing or a throw, make it especially easy to store and revisit. That makes the remembered game a lasting personal possession rather than a passing event.
They played in the decaying Polo Grounds, yet crowds came anyway, waving homemade banners and cheering enthusiastically for a team that almost always lost. Their fans became more famous than the team itself.
The early Mets fans' devotion was a protest against the Yankees' cold, corporate habit of winning. Rooting for the Yankees resembled rooting for a successful large company. Cheering a hopeless team let fans recognize their own fallibility in the players and celebrate effort and hope over results.
Writing as a fan in the seats rather than as a beat reporter moves attention away from scores and statistics. It turns toward texture: the weather, the crowd, a player's gait, the feel of a long season. The meaning of the game lies in accumulated sensory detail and the rhythm of seasons, which become a way of marking one's own years.