Spikes, in Sixth Season, Stoking Community Unity across Generations

The pundits say we’re a country divided — politically, philosophically, fundamentally.

Local headlines and statistics may suggest we’re a region divided, too: developers vs. farmers; private-sector Tea Partiers vs. academic progressives; college students vs. permanent residents.

Maybe, OK — yeah, we’re probably divided.

If you were at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park on Sunday night, though, you saw a different picture of us.

A record single-game crowd of 5,836 people turned out for the State College Spikes’ home opener, watching the six-year-old hometown team shut out the Williamsport Crosscutters in a 3-0 victory.

The fan base was a picture of the region: chatty elderly couples, young families with hollering tots, college students enrolled in summer classes, stray young professionals happy for a cheap night out.

A spectator interviewed for WJAC put it well. There’s a sense of family in the ballpark, as if you’re surrounded by hundreds of relatives and friends, he told the NBC TV affiliate.

He’s right, of course. Even in these trying times of economic distress and deep political discord, baseball — and low-cost Minor League Baseball especially, I’d argue — remains one of relatively few things that can bring people of nearly every stripe to one table.

Sure, the organizers have fancied it all up. Players in yesterday’s 6:05 p.m. game arrived at the ballpark by limousine. Sky divers parachuted onto the field. Bands played early, and fireworks detonated later to cap the evening.

Even the beer offerings are jazzy, with Otto’s and Troegs brews among those on tap. And my eagle-eyed friend spotted another wild development:

‘That is a hamburger in a doughnut,’ she whispered, nodding toward a nearby dude with some concession-sold food. ‘ON A DOUGHNUT.’

Naturally, I had to know: ‘Is it glazed?’

‘Yes,’ she said, her voice still aghast. ‘Yes, yes — it is.’

Oh, to be a heart doctor in baseball season.

No question: The flair — culinary and otherwise — has to sweeten the pot for some fans, helping to nudge them into the gates and to drum up revenue. Marketers surely have their reasons.

Take away the whiz-bang elements, though, and I bet the Spikes probably could’ve pulled a record crowd last night, anyway.

Because the real fun, if you ask me, is in the people — not in the stuff.

‘I have beer running down my leg, OK?’ an exasperated fan near us cried into a cell phone, her cup apparently having spilleth over from a seat-back cup-holder.

Others — happier companions — soon arrived and wasted no time in tut-tutting my smartphone addiction, as I live-tweeted my way through the game. It was almost as if my own grandparents had made the scene.

We people-watched, my friend and me. We laughed at — er, with — the stoked-out-of-their-minds little kids. We wondered if the Colbie Caillat and ‘Barbie Girl’ tracks on the sound system were meant to emasculate the Crosscutters.

We hoped the craziest-looking mascot creature in the house, that suspiciously wild-eyed Nookie Monster, wasn’t setting off the post-game fireworks near his outfield lair. We decided he ought to live-tweet the games from back there. (Need a wireless-provider promotion, Spikes managers?)

It was all nonsense, of course, but that’s the endless novelty of summer baseball: It unites us in the lighthearted. It drops us in seats beside people we might not otherwise see — bona fide friends and complete strangers alike.

It pulls us together — across generations, socioeconomic backgrounds, interests, races, religions — if only for an occasional evening out.

That’s America there at Lubrano Park. That’s Centre County, too.

Well done, Spikes.