For the playoffs, though, Citi Field will be packed, with the most expensive tickets of the stadium’s whole life span reserved for Mets fans (and others) who seemingly just noticed that Queens hosts a baseball team. But the real noise comes from those upper deckers, the ones who were there all along. Citi Field will be packed, but let’s not kid ourselves: It’ll mostly be packed with people who weren’t there during the lean times.

Not up top, though. There is devotion to the game itself, rather than the “stadium experience,” up there as well. The amenities in the upper deck are always more sparse: No ordering from your seat up in Section 538, no sir. There are fewer concessions, fewer restrooms, fewer distractions to keep the kids occupied — something many stadiums have begun to offer in our short-attention-span world.

This keeps you glued to your seat, and to the game, in a way that the amenities of sitting courtside never can. You’re not there for anything other than to watch the game. By sitting farther away, you are in fact more connected to the game itself.

And there is a camaraderie up there, a shared experience of being the forgotten fans — often you can’t even see the video board, or your view is blocked by a big concrete plank — and sometimes it’s as if you are watching the game from an entirely different location from where it’s happening, just you and your seatmates.

I went to a basketball game once on election night, and because cellphone coverage is so much worse in the bleachers, none of us knew what had happened until we left the arena. When the first to finally get a signal updated the others on the election news, it was as if we were explorers from a distant land, all encased in the same small shuttle, back from the same journey. You are watching the game in a massive stadium, with thousands of other people. But up there, it feels like just you and your friends, even if they’re strangers.

The next month of sports is generally the most riveting of the calendar year: the World Series, the start of the N.B.A. and N.H.L. seasons, college football and the N.F.L. Every game will have a differing roster of fans who catch the camera’s eye, closer to the action.

But the real stories will be in the upper deck, from the ones who were there all along. You might not get a foul ball up there. But you’ll get everything else.