The war between the jocks and the nerds was a running theme in the pop culture of my youth. The two camps might reconcile by the end of a particularly eventful day of detention, or the nerds might, over the course of several movies, get their revenge, but it was taken as a given that House Jock and House Nerd were at odds.

That division, never so neat as the movies pretended, has been increasingly blurred, to happy effect. Nerdy enthusiasms rule the multiplex and even the most macho sports fans pore over statistics and speak openly about their fantasy teams. Still, it was cheering to watch men and women of varying ages, in attendance at a baseball game this past Saturday, get up from their seats proudly carrying stacks of books—books on whose pages were tales of dragons and knights and zombie-like creatures who come from the north.

They were headed to a table near the left-field concession stands, where the author George R. R. Martin was signing his work and greeting his fans. It was "Game of Thrones" night at Richmond County Bank Ballpark, home of the Staten Island Yankees. The home team was playing, on this night, in special uniforms, as the Staten Island Direwolves, a name derived from the sigil of House Stark, the most beloved of the great families in Martin’s books. (The new name was reportedly cooked up when Martin, a Mets fan, said that he couldn’t lend his support to Yankees.) Their opponents were the Hudson Valley Renegades, whose own special uniforms signalled a connection with loathsome House Lannister. (Both teams’ uniforms, all seemed to agree, were garish in the extreme.)

House Lannister at the plate.

Theme nights at minor-league ballgames are often silly affairs, and this was no exception: a dance number paid tribute to Daenerys Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons; two mascots were married between innings, then immediately mowed down by water guns, in a rather rough-hewn recreation of the Red Wedding, the most notorious of the many bloodbaths in “Game of Thrones.” Late in the evening, several contest winners stood atop the visitor’s dugout and recited the vow of the Night’s Watch: “Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children.” “Sorry ladies!” some wag behind me shouted.

The low-rent character of minor-league entertainment has a way of bringing out the sweetest aspect of cultural enthusiasms. On this night, it was easy to forget that “A Song of Ice and Fire,” the multi-volume tale that Martin continues to spin (if not quickly enough, for some), has become a hugely profitable enterprise, the basis for one of the most expensive and popular series on cable, a show with abundant and sometimes narratively-dubious nudity and gore that few other shows can rival. On Saturday in Staten Island, “Game of Thrones” was once again the unlikely thing imagined by a nice older man with a big white beard who was sitting, for a good hour or two, out by the left-field concessions.

And he was raising money for Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary, in New Mexico. (Martin lives in Santa Fe.) In the middle of the eighth, Martin came out onto the field alongside a man who works at the sanctuary and who led, on a leash, Flurry, an arctic wolf, who promptly heeded nature’s call right there in foul territory. By then, the Direwolves had a commanding lead. Martin said that he was glad to see the team “kicking ass,” and that if they could just hold on for another couple of innings he wouldn’t need to kill another Stark.

A different kind of Red Wedding.

The most delightful elements of the evening, though, were the innovations in crowd response. When a member of the Direwolves did something good—hit a double, say—the loudspeaker played a wolf’s howl, and soon the fans were howling their approval of the local squad. (The night’s lone home run earned a snippet of the HBO show’s stirring theme song.) Even better, when someone from House Lannister struck out, the loudspeaker delivered repeated cries of “Shame!” This was another lift from the “Game of Thrones” soundtrack, and the wit of this one was only fully evident to those who are caught up on the show’s most recent season. (A fan near me, in Yankees cap and “Winter Is Coming” T-shirt, helpfully explained the backstory to the uninformed. There were spoilers.)

This latter cry proved equally adaptable. When a Lannister hit one of the Direwolves with a pitch, the crowd yelled out, unbidden, “Shame! Shame! Shame!” And when the Direwolves took the field, strikeouts became even more eagerly anticipated than usual. In the top of the ninth, with two down, and just one more strike needed to finish off the batter and send the crowd home happy, the pitcher got him looking. “Shame!” rang out one last time.