A virtual village of Tribe fans

Had lunch Friday with a whip-smart thirtysomething named Jay Levin. He's from Old City; he runs a recording studio (Turtle) and does technology analysis. Born in Ohio, he went to Penn and never left Philly. He's an exemplar of the under-40 cohort fueling the Center City renaissance.

I bought our omelettes as a gesture of thanks to Jay - for helping make this a great summer for me and introducing me to about 30 new friends.

He did all that, even though Friday was the first time we'd ever met. I've never met the 30 others either, though I can tell you exactly how they're feeling today.

They're worried. Tense.

How do I know this? Therein lies a tale about things traditional and cutting-edge, about nostalgia and the Internet, about a gripping game called baseball, and a scuffling town called Cleveland.

When he's not working his two jobs, Jay is co-moderator of an Internet blog called Let's Go Tribe (www.letsgotribe.com). This site is devoted to the discussion, dissection, celebration and lamentation of the Cleveland Indians. Jay's team. And mine.

Our team is locked in mortal playoff combat now with the Boston Red Sox. That series may be over by the time you read this, but it wasn't when Jay and I sat down to eat. It was hard to enjoy the food, what with our stomachs churning.

Let's Go Tribe is a virtual watering hole for the Tribe diaspora, far-flung souls united by stubborn love of a sports team that hasn't won it all since 1948. The site regularly gets posts from keyboards in New Zealand and Bulgaria. Most posters are in their 20s and 30s, well educated, given to profane wit and superstition. (For some reason, it has become vitally important to LGTers to eat soup during every Tribe game.) Every night, the blog hums with rapid-fire comments on the game in progress.

Finding LGT has made me less skeptical about the notion of "Internet community" hyped by promoters of sites such as Facebook. Being a Tribe fan in Philly is lonely work; here, I've found a lively group with precisely the same screw loose as I.

LGT is a baseball site, sure, but it's also a conscious experiment in online community, testing whether upholding standards of civility can protect against what Jay calls "the antisocial types" who "become a sort of malevolent presence."

In this digital family, Jay is the stern Dad, co-moderator and founder Ryan Richards is the gentler leader. Jay, a bear of a man, is genial in person. But his online persona doesn't suffer fools - which in his book includes fans of the sacrifice bunt, but mostly means people who fire rude insults. He scolds online, counsels in private e-mail, and bans the incorrigible without pity.

It's working. Many LGT posters seem to hold Jay in awe, for his writing ability and the mountain of facts at his command - and in fear, for his ability to reprimand in seven crisp words. When I mentioned to Jay how he can be a little blunt, he smiled: "I've probably begun to show more restraint."

It's a community of strong personalities, whom I've come to savor like characters in a good novel:

There's MauiChuck, the mad-poet elder, who may hate the New York Yankees more than any other living human. There's Gradyforpresident, a manic Iowa college student who punctuates game threads with updates on how many Pabst Blue Ribbons he has consumed to support the team. I worry for his liver, but find him hilarious. Most of the regular posters are men, but more women have been
joining.

How did Jay Levin end up as a sage and proctor for this madcap community?

"In school, I thought of being a writer," he said. "My hero was Mike Royko." Instead of following the legendary Chicago columnist, after college he joined the migration of young talent into information technology. Now, baseball and blogs have opened a new door. He started writing about sports for an e-mail list of friends; he discovered Richards' Let's Go Tribe in 2005. The two became collaborators and friends, of a new sort.

"Actually, Ryan and I have never met in person, or even spoken on the phone," he said. "We e-mail a lot."

Now, Jay is blogging the baseball playoffs for Esquire, a big-time gig that once would have been unimaginable for someone with his slim writing pedigree. So he's also an emblem of another trend: the way the Internet radically enables the expert amateur to
find an audience.

A newspaperman's confession: If I miss an Indians game now, I turn first to LGT to find out what happened - ahead of the oatmeal prose of Ohio sportswriters. A site like LGT has a freshness and wit that the old guard lost a long time ago.

I've met the future, and it looks a lot like Jay Levin. I'm just fine with that. Even though my paycheck may be in big trouble.