Reviewing Mrs. Morhard and the Boys

Baseball levitates on its foundation of myths like Rando Calrissian’s Cloud City. Once its legends take root the game surfs them no matter how many times the narratives get debunked. Moreover baseball, even to kids, is a territorial phenomenon. Teams belong to their communities, even if those communities are less than centralized. Most fans root for their local teams, of course, though there are extended communities—“Red Sox Nation” is a good example of one—wherein one may root with local fervor for a team which is anything but close by. Take the fan from rural Maine who has never been to Boston yet experiences it as a lived reality, if not more than lived—imaginatively supercharged like some fantasy kingdom, populated above all by the Red Sox and actuated by all their myths, legends, and stories.

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