Site inciters: King, left, and Hemmerich Photo:Jon Gardiner

n March 26, 1989, in East Rutherford,New Jersey, the Blue Devils won theEast Regional Finals of the NCAA Tournament, defeating Georgetown 85-77 in overtime. Last November, they did it again, this time on a TV screen in the parking lot outside Wallace Wade stadium. Duke had just lost to N.C. State in football, but one group of middle-aged Duke fans--turtlenecks, cuffed khakis, wedding rings, penny loafers--refused to end the day in defeat. Instead, they gathered around a mini TV set up on the tailgate of a Toyota Landcruiser, popped a tape into the VCR, and relived the glory:

"I was there."
"Me, too."
"This Laettner kid's gonna be something special, people!"
"Look at Snyder run the court. He's coaching material!"
"Okay, this is our biggest lead, and then we go cold for about five minutes."
"I hate this part. Can we rewind back to Henderson's dunk on Mourning?"
"That was so sweet."
"It was sweetness."

Community Redefined

Passersby stopped and squinted at the screen. But the group was oblivious. It was as if, to them, it was quite unexceptional to be forty-something and cheering on a team that wasn't just destined to win but that had, in fact, already won, as if the surest antidote for a tough loss was to simply rewind time and watch a great win.

And this appeared to work. They high-fived. They danced. They got quiet during free throws and went "Whoosh!" afterwards, and when it was all over, they weren't going home after a crushing defeat--they were going to the Final Four.

What was even stranger than the sight itself was how it came to be. Five years ago, none of those present had ever laid eyes on one another. They didn't work together or live together. They weren't friends at Duke--some didn't even go to Duke--and if they were in the same class or the same dorm, as some were, they had only discovered this years after the fact. They were strangers in nearly every sense of the word, separated by age and profession and, in some cases, hundreds and hundreds of miles. But they would talk almost every day.