Dora Anne Mills, MD, MPH, FAAP, is a public health physician.

Confession: I’ve fallen hard for the Hearts of Pine.

Two years ago, I wouldn’t have believed that some of my favorite evenings would be spent at Fitzpatrick Stadium (“Fitzy”), wrapped in a scarf, singing with thousands of my fellow Mainers while young men chase a ball across the turf. But here we are. And here is the harder confession: our boys have lost a lot of games this season.

So why write a love letter to the Hearts of Pine now? Because I’ve been around long enough to know that losing seasons are where the real lessons live.

Consider the Red Sox. I grew up in Farmington, in a family where loyalty to the Sox was passed down like a casserole recipe, with love, and with a certain amount of suffering baked in. From 1918 to 2004, 86 years, generations of New Englanders were born, raised children and passed on without seeing a World Series title.

Then came October 2004, when the Sox climbed out of a three-games-to-none hole against the Yankees that no team in baseball history had escaped, and the curse was broken, not because 2004 was magic, but because 86 years of showing up finally met its moment. The people who wept in the streets that fall weren’t celebrating one season. They were celebrating all of them. Especially the losing ones.

In fact, we sing about exactly this before every match. When thousands of voices rise together at Fitzy in “The Ballad of the 20th Maine,” we’re not singing a fight song about winning. We’re singing about Mainers who held on when holding on seemed impossible.

On the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the 20th Maine Regiment, farmers, fishermen and lumbermen under Col. Joshua Chamberlain, a college professor from Brunswick, anchored the far left end of the entire Union line at Little Round Top. Wave after wave came at them. Their ammunition ran out.

By every reasonable measure, they were beaten. That was precisely the moment Chamberlain ordered the bayonet charge that swept down the hill, held the flank and helped turn the tide of the Civil War. Maine’s most celebrated military moment was born not of momentum but of nothing left except each other and the refusal to quit.

It is no accident that this is the anthem our club chose, and no accident we sing it just as loudly as we would if were in first place.

Even the club’s name carries this lesson. “Hearts of Pine” comes from the heartwood of the pine tree — the dense center of the trunk that gives the tree the strength to stand through every season and storm, a quality the founders saw mirrored in Mainers themselves. Heartwood forms slowly, ring by ring, and it’s the hard seasons — the droughts, the ice storms — that a tree grows through to build its strongest core.

A season like this one is a ring in the trunk. And of course, the “Hearts” honors Portland’s beloved Valentine’s Day Bandit, who for decades papered our city with paper hearts each February, not because everything was going well, but simply to remind us we are loved. Strength at the core, love on the outside. Has a community ever chosen a better name for its team?

Which brings me to my favorite statistic of the season: even amid the losses, average attendance at Fitzpatrick Stadium is higher this year than during last year’s storybook playoff run. Let that sink in. When the wins dried up, more of us came. If you want a measure of a community’s health, I can hardly think of a better one than a city that packs the stands for its team through thick and thin. That’s not fair-weather fandom. That’s love.

So to the players: last year you gave this city a miracle season nobody expected. This year, you’re giving us something quieter but just as important — the chance to prove we love you for more than the wins. The men of the 20th Maine weren’t remembered for how the battle started, but for how they finished. Keep going.

And to my fellow fans: I’ll see you at Fitz. Bring your scarf, bring your voice, bring a neighbor who’s never been. Someday this club will lift a trophy, and the sweetest part won’t be the winning — it will be remembering we were here for all of it, singing the ballad in the rain, holding the line together.

The Red Sox took 86 years. Chamberlain’s regiment turned everything around in a single afternoon. The Hearts of Pine are on year two, still growing their heartwood, ring by ring. Either way, I’d say we’re right on schedule.

Onward, Hearts of Pine!