There is nothing in the world like being a teammate. There are ways we try and replicate the connection teammates enjoy: at work, through volunteering, even marriage (if you're lucky and marry well). But there is nothing in the world like being part of an athletic team with a common goal. And the harder we try to replicate it, the more frustrating the endeavor becomes.

When Hall of Fame basketball player Magic Johnson retired abruptly in 1991 — having been diagnosed with HIV — he said what he would miss most was not the championships (he won five in the NBA, another in college), the adulation (he was named MVP three times), or the packed arenas screaming his name. No, Magic said he'd most miss "being one of the boys."

This June will mark the 25th anniversary of the finest squad I was ever a part of, the 1985 Northfield Marauders baseball team. Playing high school baseball in Vermont requires a fortitude that makes me wonder about the future big-leaguers sharpening their skills in sun-splashed regions like Florida and California. It's unlikely they've taken an indoor rubberized baseball off the tile of a basketball court directly in the chin (during practice in March when the snow outside is still measured in feet). It's even more unlikely they've caught a fly ball through snowflakes (when the schedule forced us outside in April). I've done both, and my teammates of a quarter-century ago would tell you the same.

I can recall the lineup of that '85 team as easily as Brooklyn Dodger fans will reel off the world-champion "bums" of 1955. Audie, Patrick, Jimmy, Eddie, Joe, Frankie (Harte), Gibby, Todd, and Greydie. Merely a sophomore (and with skills best described as those of a good-field/no-hit outfielder), I hardly got off the bench that spring. But I was there for practice after practice (between games with the junior varsity), and with the best seat — in the dugout — any ballplayer could ask for. When we won a state championship at Burlington's Centennial Field, playing time wasn't a qualifier for hugs. The uniform we were wearing was, though, the solitary tangible representation of what we'd become over three months together: a team of champions.

My high-school days were filled with teammate moments like that, though I never again celebrated a championship. (As a junior I played soccer with many of those same teammates and lost in a state championship. And my last high-school baseball game — played the day after I graduated — was a title-game loss at Centennial Field.) Tiring practices when none of us were in the mood to be there, but were all there for each other. Games when everything went our way, when even the scrubs got off the bench to dust off their mitt or jump shot. And games when our hearts were torn in two, when the day after felt like a world we didn't quite like anymore. (The best basketball team — by far — I ever suited up for lost in the state semifinals on my 16th birthday. If I live that long, I'll tell you on my 76th that it was the best team in Vermont that year.)

I've tried to find a similar bond as adulthood has wrapped its tentacles around me. Intramural sports in college, beer-league softball, now supporting my daughters as they learn the value of teammates themselves. And it's just never taken. My wife is the greatest "teammate" I'll ever have (I married well), and she was a better athlete than I was. But she and I never shared a nervous bus ride to a field where we weren't supposed to win and did. We never worked together on the craft of properly wearing the stirrups of our baseball uniform. And we've never acted like a game — or season — is all that really matters. (Even with her tentacles, adulthood does shape perspective.)

Those 1985 teammates have scattered. Some I've stayed in touch with — Audie was a groomsman in my wedding; saw him last fall — while others are frozen in the 25-year-old memory bank I've grown to cherish. Today, I consider my colleagues teammates, and I Iove some of them in ways similar to the bond I had with my buddies in the dugout. But until management distributes uniforms, throws a ball in play, and schedules bus trips to rival publishers near and far, our efforts will be more mercenary than I'd like to admit.

There is simply nothing in the world like being a teammate.