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Shortwavers, we are deep into one of the best seasons of the year, in my opinion.

Baseball season.

Every year, I love to root for my San Diego Padres, though to be honest, I don't spend a lot of time watching the players when I go to a game.

It's all about my routines around the game. And I'm not the only one. I'm Dimitris Xigalatas. Dmitrius, or

Professor X, as his students call him, is a University of Connecticut cognitive anthropologist.

He's a lifelong fan of football or soccer, as we call it in the States.

I vividly remember the first time I went to the sports stadium in Greece.

I was in 1985.

My team, or what was later to become my team, because of that experience, was on its way

to winning a title.

And the stadium looked like a ball of fire.

Everybody was like flares and jumping up and down. And I remember

I was too small to see what was happening in the pitch. My father kept lifting me up. And it was

that experience that ritualized chanting and jumping up and down among the fans that really

turned me into a fan. And through the repetition of that experience, week after week, year after year, that's how you become a fan.

All that repetition turns into rituals, these sometimes little but still important, repeated behaviors.

Like how growing up my dad would take me to Padre Games every summer.

We would eat hot dogs and popcorn, and I'd watch

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