"Then Kenny Rogers walked in the winning run to seal the Atlanta Braves' victory over the Mets in the 1999 playoffs."

• The Met fan knows all about Kenny Rogers. Too bad he failed the Mets and Yankees in big post season opportunities. How lucky Kenny Rogers is to have had so many chances.

"The self-esteem of some male and female fans rises and falls with a game's outcome, with losses affecting their optimism about everything from getting a date to winning at darts, one study showed.

• It has long been assumed that ardent sports fans derive excitement and a sense of community from rooting for a big-time team. But a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that for some fans, the ties go much deeper.

Some researchers have found that fervent fans become so tied to their teams that they experience hormonal surges and other physiological changes while watching games, much as the athletes do.

• Psychologists have long suspected that many die-hard fans are lonely, alienated people searching for self-esteem by identifying with a sports team. But a study at the University of Kansas suggests just the opposite -- that sports fans suffer fewer bouts of depression and alienation than do people who are uninterested in sports.

"'It becomes possible to attain some sort of respect and regard not by one's own achievements but by one's connection to individuals of attainment,'' he said.

His later research showed that sports fans tend to claim credit for a team's success, saying ''we won'' to describe a victory, but tend to distance themselves from a team's failure, saying ''they lost'' when describing a defeat.

But Dr. Cialdini's initial theories did not cover all spectators, because some deeply committed fans, like the long suffering souls who love the Chicago Cubs, remain loyal and fiercely attached to their idols despite years of failure.

A raft of studies since then has found that ''highly identified'' fans -- both men and women -- are not only less likely to abandon a team when it is doing poorly, but tend to blame their team's failures on officiating or bad luck rather than the other team's skill. They also exhibit higher levels of physiological arousal at games, spend more money on tickets and merchandise and enjoy generally higher self-esteem than people uninterested in sports.

''It's the highly identified fans who demonstrate this fierce connection and feel elation and dejection along with the team,'' Dr. Cialdini said.

Gene Hamm, a 37-year-old elevator mechanic from Staten Island, says his passion for the Mets, ignited as a boy during the 1969 season, has never been extinguished. He watches every game he can on television, his emotions rising and falling with every pitch, every hit, every managerial decision.

''I actually feel myself sitting on the couch managing the team,'' he said.

Mr. Hamm spent months at home last year (1999) recuperating from a job-related injury, and he said watching the Mets kept him from slipping into depression.

• Then Kenny Rogers walked in the winning run to seal the Atlanta Braves' victory over the Mets in the playoffs.

''You don't walk in the winning run,'' he said, looking as if he had swallowed a glass of lemon juice. ''I really wish they could have won last year. That would have made me feel so much better.''

• The results demonstrated that men and women who were die-hard fans were much more optimistic about their sex appeal after a victory. They were also more sanguine about their ability to perform well at mental and physical tests, like darts and word games, Dr. Hirt found. When the team lost, that optimism evaporated."

from the NY Times, 8/11/2000 by James C. McKinley, Jr.

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