I was in a sports bar the other night, talking with a born-and-bred Red Sox fan, and a transplanted Mets fan, while we watched Game Two of the California Series. And as the game went on, we started talking about the difference between fans in the northeast and other old baseball towns, and the wild, wild west.

Edison Field was rocking to the sound of ThunderStix--inflatable noisemakers fans can whap together to make noise instead of clapping--everyone, even Danny Devito, was wearing red. At the clinching game of the NLCS, Giants fans had been instructed to wear black. This makes for some nice visuals on the television, and probably makes the fans feel like part of something.

But can you imagine them trying to tell people what to wear to Fenway Park? If the Red Sox put out an announcement asking everyone to wear red, I think you'd get at least ten to twenty percent of the crowd there wearing green or blue or something else out of spite. Fenway is a place where they sit on their hands if the scoreboard operators get too uppity about telling them when to clap! It's a place where huge signs in the bleachers inform people that "handling of any inflatable object" is punishable by ejection. So, even though beach balls are anathema to most East Coast fans, you'll see at least five or six batted around per game at Fenway. Because, hey, don't try to tell us what to do.

Yankee Stadium is similar. I was trying to imagine the scene. "Vinnie, honey, John Sterling just said on the radio fans are supposed to wear the blue batting practice jersey to tonight's game." "What? But Mabel, Roger Clemens is pitching and if I don't wear the white pinstriped shirt with his number on it, he'll get shelled!" "I know, honey, I know. Maybe my lucky hat will have to be enough." The Minnesota "homer hankie" is kind of cool, and we would never turn down free stuff handed out at the door, but I just don't picture Yankees fans waving tea towels around. And as we proved in Game 5 of the ALDS last year, and in Game 5 of the ALCS, too, we make plenty of noise and coordinate perfectly well without any coaching. Remember "No Game Six!", Hip Hip "Jorge!" and the good-bye ovations for Paul O'Neill?

Damn, I miss Paul O'Neill.

But back to the topic. I was just running through an inventory of the ballparks I have been to and thus far I haven't been to a stadium that rivals the interactivity of the fans in Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park. Shea is close, but I've never been there for a Mets game that wasn't also a Yankees game, so it is hard to gauge. But from listening to the guy talk in the bar the other night, it's up there.

But even in Baltimore, which is certainly an old baseball town, the crowd sits quietly and politely a lot of the time, and has to be exhorted on "two strikes!" to clap. Puh-leese. Is it just that the Orioles aren't worth the effort right now? I went this year to Arizona to see the Diamondbacks play on the day that they clinched their division. Clinching day! You would have thought it would be raucous and rocking in the BOB that day, eh? Nope. I was the only one in the early innings shouting things like "sit 'em down!" on two strikes. Maybe it was just that their least impressive pitcher was on the mound (Rick Helling, late of the Texas Rangers), their best hitter had just been sidelined with a shoulder injury (Luis Gonzalez), and so they were subdued. But no, I think in Arizona they're just not used to interacting with the game so much.

Fans are a part of the game. Home field advantage means less in baseball than in other sports (in fact, in this postseason, every team with home field advantage has lost every series thus far!) but that does not mean the crowd does not have an effect. I remember Jeff Nelson giving an interview about pitching in one postseason game with the Yankees trailing, in which he said he went for strikeouts to "get the crowd going so we could pull this thing out." The Yankees came back and won.

At both Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium, the fans will start their own cheers, and even start their own traditions (the two-strike clap, the roll call, Sweet Caroline). I have seen both Red Sox fans and Yankees fans applaud for an outstanding play made by the other team! (Though not when the opposing team was each other.) As the Sox fan I was sitting next to at the bar said, "As a Red Sox fan born and bred, I was raised to hate the Yankees. But Boston fans and New York fans are the same. We're more alike than any other fans." It's the northeast, it's traditions passed down through many generations, it's baseball. And that's why you found a Yankees fan like me, a Red Sox fan like him, and a Mets fan like the other guy, all sitting together in a sports bar on Cape Cod watching the all-California World Series.

They say viewership for this series is down country-wide. (So much for the assertion that "nobody" likes to see the Yankees in it year after year.) But it is championships and the struggle for championships that builds those generations of loyal fans. Many a Sox fan dates his or her "year" to 1975, or to 1986, so many Yankees fans were branded in 1961 or 1962, or 1977-1978, or 1996 through present. We didn't just grow up to be fans of our teams, though. We grew up with baseball in our blood. Maybe this year will be stamped into the memory of a new generation of Angels fans. So the next time there is a Subway Series, or the next time the Red Sox have their chance to overthrow "the Curse," even the West Coast will be tuning in.