Shame on you both, Kathy and Hal, for not sticking to the texts to support your points. Let us now consider SLC and baseball dispassionately: --Most obviously, he wrote an entire book about a Yankee (indeed, a book in which baseball is played by men in armor). And yet it seems to me his Yankee by no means emerges as a hero. Like the Bronx Monsters, he is a destroyer. --As a Coloradoan, I would of course love to find affinities between SLC and my own team. But when I ponder honestly what he said of his brief time of toil in the mines and mills (see Roughing It), I can't in good conscience make any case for affection for the Rockies. --In that same Yankee book, he hoots at anyone silly enough to believe in Giants. And it is one of several books that reveal how deeply Mark Twain despised Royals of every stripe. --Hal, when you calmly consider his treatment of the Medieval church, I truly don't think you can make any case at all for Cardinals . --Yes, Tom and Huck's yearning to become Pirates runs deep, and yet it is surely something Twain associates with childishness. Similarly, his memories of his own days as a Cub were loving and warm; and yet there too we have a strong whiff of immaturity. ....Having surely now said enough to start the entire Forum thinking along proper scholarly lines, I shall leave the remaining detailed analysis to others. . . . Adding only that once you have put your absurd local prejudices aside, I am sure that the correct answer will strike you quickly: When we consider the entire pattern of his literary preoccupations--all those switched identities, disguises, false claimants in book after book--it is impossible for the detached student to imagine Mark Twain rooting for anyone but Those Extraordinary TWINS. Yours for objective analysis, Mark Coburn [log in to unmask]