AUBURN - At opening day Tuesday, as excited Auburn Doubledays fans waited outside the gates at Falcon Park and a ragtime band played “Take Me out to the Ballgame,” Rick and Becky Kervin stood beaming, amazed that they were about to see their 23-year-old son Bryan make his professional baseball debut.

Coming from Texas, where football reigns supreme, the Kervins soaked up the energy of the crowd, which they said made this experience particularly moving.

“The Texas fans don't have that old school passion for baseball,” Rick Kervin said.

Among those lined up early was Chickie Germano and her gang, who watch the Doubledays every season from their perch high in the bleachers between first base and home plate.

Germano, a charter member of the Doubledays boosters, has been coming to games for more than 40 years and looks forward to opening day and the chance to see her friends again after the long winter.

“Chickie is our baseball matriarch,” said Linda Bandas.

“We're here when it's raining, we're here when it's snowing,” Germano said. “We're not fair-weather fans.”

Settling into their preferred seats, the crew positioned their foam cushions, dipped soft pretzels in orange cheese sauce and munched on Cracker Jack as they mused about what makes Auburn baseball special.

“These kids still play the game because they want to play,” said 'Panama Bob' Plenge, who drives all the way from Oswego to watch the games with his friends.

“If I go to a (Syracuse) Chiefs game, they're three weeks away from going to the pros whereas with these guys, their hearts are still in the game.”

Bandas, a retired middle school teacher, also likes that minor league baseball lets fans watch as players go from good to great.

“There's a connection between watching my students grow, get better at what they did and watching these guys do the same,” she said.

Her husband Stefan agreed, adding, “It's a great place to see kids work together.”

For fan Rick Heuser, the crowd is half the fun.

“In New York City, baseball fans are vicious,” he said. “If you're around a hometown crowd, (on the other hand), everybody just comes to have a good time. I don't even think they care if they win or not.”

For this year's opening day, Heuser and his 12-year-old son Jonathan watched the players warm up in the outfield from their box seats behind home plate. Upgrading their seats on opening day, Heuser said, was to become their new father-son tradition, a way of saying that this is not just an ordinary game.

“It's the beginning of something fun,” Jonathan Heuser said.