Right now, my Facebook page is dotted with references to the Hartford Whalers, Winnipeg Jets and Montreal Expos.

It’s 1.30 in the morning, and I’m drawn in by the power of teams no longer there, contracted or moved elsewhere, their original incarnations working their way until they become favorites of ours.

I’ve been to Montreal, and I’ve seen the Expos play (in 2002, versus the Houston Astros), and I remember falling in love with a young Vladimir Guerrero, and despite the last place team, despite the empty stadium, despite my most prevalent Expo memory having been David Cone’s perfect game, I still found myself liking the team. I liked it then, and I love it more now.

The Expos are only one of many teams where the nostalgia permeates, in baseball and in other sports, but they might be the most obvious example of this feeling because they were torn from us, undone by the strike, just when they were the best team in all of baseball. That’ll create nostalgia, just like the Dodgers skipping town only a couple years after winning their one and only World Series.

Sometimes I wonder if what I love is the team…or the idea of the team.

What I love isn’t so much Tim Raines or Andre Dawson or Dennis Martinez; what I love is the idea of a team, playing in a city that loves their team, like Seattle loved their Sonics, like Cleveland loved their original Browns.

I wonder, if/when the Nets move to Brooklyn, will their New Jersey tenure be looked back upon with a sense of fondness? The idea of a basketball team in Brooklyn has a ton of pull, and even I, a native Jerseyan, don’t absolutely hate the idea, but what my reaction will be when the move is finally done…I have no idea.

On the surface, it’s crazy to compare the move or contraction of a team to the death of someone you know and love, but when you get to the fanatical level that you’re probably at if you’re reading this post, the relationship becomes complicated. You know the team, everything you possibly can know about them, celebrate their successes and mourn their failures even if you know the reciprocation is never coming.

Maybe it’s the notion that they’re there, like that Nike Ad from last Christmas said, when everything else fails, when rent is too high, the weather too 33-and-raining, the wrong candidate wins the election…the team is still there, still showing up, still playing, for good or ill. So, then, when the team is taken from you, be it after a long, drawn out process or something sudden and nearly overnight, that certainty, that fallback, that pride, is gone.

What would happen if the departed team came back? If the Nationals went back to Montreal or the Carolina Hurricanes back to Hartford?

Would they be welcomed back with open arms and live happily ever after as we hope? Or are we more in love with the nostalgia than we are the team itself?

As geography constantly changes, so too will teams in their locations, choosing to migrate to more populous or lucrative areas, and fans somewhere will be left in the cold. The Expos and the Whalers and the Jets and the Sonics will go from living experiences to the memories of a Wikipedia generation, and the nostalgia will continue to grow.