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But as you get older, it becomes harder to believe. Yes, the Dodgers won the World Series in 1955, but they aren't ever coming back from Los Angeles. Loss of faith can set in. That, however, is when you appreciate the deeper benefits of being a fan. For me, following one soccer team has been the connective tissue of my life. I left Liverpool to go to college and have never had the slightest desire to live there again, but wandering around the world, living in seven different cities on three continents, my passion was the thing that gave me a sense of what home meant. Being a fan became a fixed point, wherever I lived. It was--it is--one of the two or three things that I think of as making me, well, me.
But fandom does more than defeat distance and geography. It acts as a time machine. There is only one thing I have done consistently for nearly 50 years, and that is support Liverpool. To be a fan is a blessing, for it connects you as nothing else can to childhood, and to everything and everyone that marked your life between your time as a child and the present. So when I sat in Hong Kong at dawn watching the championship game on TV, I didn't have to try to manufacture the tiny, inconsequential strands that make up a life. They were there all around me. Tea at my Grandma's after a game; a favorite uncle who died too young; bemused girlfriends who didn't get it (I married the one who did); the 21st-birthday cake that my mother iced in Liverpool's colors; my tiny daughters in their first club shirts; the best friends with whom I've long lost touch. What does being a fan mean? It means you'll never walk alone.