A photo of the author and his beloved as model observers of a baseball contest.

Unflappable. We will not be flapped.

There are many differing demeanors found among the attendees of any baseball contest. The above photo contains a number of them.

There is the photo-bombing younger sister (seen at left above), who has no interest in the game to begin with, but sees an evening at the ballpark as an occasion to enjoy nonetheless.

There is the moderate fan (at center above, between the figures of the foreground), wearing apparel that expresses his casual, Nike-sponsored fandom. He is intelligent and observant, but really, he knows little about the intricacies of the game, and he doesn’t care to know them. He is there to clap excitedly at the triumphs of the home team, nod in pity at its shortcomings, and to otherwise mind his reasonably handsome business. For him, this contest constitutes entertainment; it is not baseball.

There is the sleeping fan (at right above, his peaceful face just peeking out) who took too much sun and too much drink while tailgating before the game. He is an excitable fan, normally — not one of the fair-weather types, he’ll tell you. Normally, however, he doesn’t have so much to drink.

There are, finally (and at the focus of the photo above), fans who consider themselves to be the model fans, whom nothing escapes as far as the contest itself is concerned; who consider the wave to be fascist but never say so; who believe that the ballpark is no place for children or for those possessed of weak bladders; who clap and cheer and harbor heartbreak only with their minds, and with the subtle, silent shifting of their attention to follow the action.

When these fans have children, and when those children are able to sit still long enough to attend a ballgame, those children shall not require popped corn or the like; they shall only require the sound of oak or ash striking cowhide, the bright lights of the ballpark on their unblemished faces, the flowing swoop and scoop of the shortstop, the firmness of the park’s seats on their well-disciplined hindquarters…

And they, too, shall have their likenesses immortalized on such a baseball blog as this.