ABSTRACT
This chapter is about the emotionality experienced in the field. It discusses field studies that examined how people enacted their emotions and expressed their identities at the closing of "their" major league ballparks. The chapter presents several quotations from the ethnographies that reveal various aspects of emotionality in the (baseball) field. Each of the statements displays a different dimension of ballpark culture and shows how the people the authors studied define themselves through baseball. The ballpark is experienced as community in a richer sense as a place where friends and families come together to work, to play, and to share in community celebrations. Fans and franchise employees invest much of their individual identities in baseball and in their favorite teams and ballparks. For many of these fans and employees—especially for those who grew up playing organized baseball—this investment of identity begins in childhood when they fantasize about being major league players.
