Growing up as a child in New York, I was first and foremost a baseball fan, more specifically a Mets fan. I began reading the sports pages when I was about 8, and I can still visualize the layout of the baseball scores in The New York Times: The scores ran in threes, an m-space before the second and a double m-space before the third. The thing I always remember most was the designation after many games: (n) for night game. Long before the advent of 24-hour sports cable and online, one was left to wonder what were the results of the late night games. For all the missing scores, I soon graduated to The Sporting News, then the baseball bible, and discovered a whole new world, the world of minor league baseball. I couldn’t wait for opening day when TSN would run complete box scores of minor-league games in towns I had never heard of. Minor league baseball went on a decline in the 1970s, only to enjoy a renaissance in the late ’80s. Minor league baseball is very much the model for the A-League and the other USL leagues, which kicked off this past weekend. Several teams are operated by minor league baseball owners or share facilities with minor league baseball teams, notably the Rochester Rhinos, the kings of the A-League. Minor league baseball has some major economic advantages. Its players are paid by their parent clubs. Operators can get in many more revenue-producing dates during the long season. Minor league soccer doesn’t have the folklore that draws so many fans to minor league baseball, but you have to admire Francisco Marcos’ efforts for developing pro soccer, even in its modest form, in cities big and small across the country. FANS: LET’S HEAR YOUR VIEW Click here to log onto (Soccer) American Graffiti. Then click on the topic titled “YOUR VIEW: Life on the Farm” and respond to Paul Kennedy in 200 words or less. Best responses may be reprinted in Soccer America Magazine. If YOUR View is selected, we’ll send you a cool T-shirt and pin… Because You’re FANATIC.