There is all the free beer you can drink, and 63 flat screen televisions in the Fan Cave, and a pool table, and skee ball. Famous people are often dropping by.
"I'm hanging out with Cliff Lee after his first win!" gushed Mack. "To see Cliff Lee playing skee ball right in front of me? Of course I kept it in. I was being cool. No big deal. You know how he leans over when he pitches? Well, he does the same thing in skee ball."
These cave dwellers are living the dream, but they know why they're there - to blog and tweet and engage with young fans, to expand baseball's reach in a new way.
"If baseball doesn't have a presence online, it will soon be extinct," said Mack, 24, of Bethlehem, Pa. This may be the exuberance of a social media disciple or delirium of a fan locked in the Fan Cave too long, but it only slightly overstates the attitude of Major League Baseball.
"People want to be part of a community," said MLB spokesman Matt Bourne. "You can still be a part of the community from your couch by engaging with social media."
MLB needs a steady supply of content to draw visitors to its website, its Fan Cave Facebook page (599,379 "likes") and to follow it on Twitter (167,533 followers), so it has hired an advertising agency and production company - and relied on the cave dwellers - to supplement moments like a perfect game.
The other day, Adrian Gonzalez of the Boston Red Sox came to the Fan Cave at Fourth and Broadway and hit grounders with a foam ball on the sidewalk outside.
Random civilians attempted to field the balls barehanded. When a Yankees fan took a turn, Gonzalez hit an uncatchable laser. When the crowd grew, he started launching bombs down the street.
Mack has made many videos on his laptop, such as a spoof on Toy Story 3 after Hunter Pence and Shane Victorino were traded. That was all his idea. After the trade, he also starred in a video, lip-synching a riff on the popular song "Somebody That I Used to Know" by Gotye. Mack pouts as he mouths the lyrics, "Goodbye to Pence and Victorino, now you're just batters that I used to know."
Last year in its debut, the Fan Cave started with one fan and the novel idea of letting him watch every inning of every game.
This season, MLB knew it had to come up with a new twist. So it went Survivor. About 22,000 fans submitted videos hoping to be chosen for the Fan Cave. MLB took 50 to spring training for tryouts and started the season with nine in the Cave. One more cut is coming this week.
The remaining three will watch through the World Series. One will be left at the last game. Eviction is subjective, made by MLB.
"Gordon has put together some really good videos throughout the season," said Bourne, the MLB spokesman. "He's a really talented editor. He's come up with some great content, and he's been very entertaining in the skits, which isn't something we had been expecting out of him."
Mack went to Johns Hopkins University and was working in New York as a video editor when he applied for the Fan Cave. In the Fan Cave he has met Shane and Charlie and Cole and Cliff. MLB brought the cave dwellers to the All-Star Game in Kansas City, and Mack asked Carlos Ruiz if he ever thought of changing his name legally from Carlos to Chooch. Chooch just laughed.
After 1,743 games, with 687 to go last week, none of the cave dwellers had gone stir crazy - because they live a charmed life.
They have three big floors of space in the Fan Cave, an old Tower Records store. There is nothing cavelike about it. There is a refrigerator filled with Bud, comfy couches and recliners, a bar downstairs for parties with beer cups that fill from the bottom - the latest fad. There is a stage and the Fan Cave has hosted rock concerts - Nas, the Fray, the Avett Brothers, Ziggy Marley.
They live together in SoHo, though mostly they just sleep there, and have a driver take them to and from work every day. They get stipends, and order in lunch and dinner, whatever they want. They agree that of the four remaining cave dwellers Kyle Thompson of Lawton, Okla., is the nicest, but he's the only one from the Heartland, a Cardinals fan, and just the other day he ordered milk shakes for all of them and treated.
And when the perfect game ended Wednesday, Kyle hurdled the couch, raced to the windows, and high-fived the hordes who were watching on the other side of the glass.
The cave dwellers often arrive at 10 or 11 a.m., when celebrities or players visit, and almost always get there by 12:45 p.m., in their seats watching by 1 p.m., because virtually every day of the season there has been a day game somewhere.
Games roll and ooze, one into another. Six nights a week they never leave before 1 a.m., after the last out of the last game on the West Coast. On Sundays, the last game starts at 8 p.m. Eastern, so they leave by 11 or midnight.
They live for the rarest of rare moments when the West Coast afternoon games will end by 6:30 or even 6:45 p.m. Eastern time, and they have a window of 15 minutes before the 7:05 East Coast evening games begin. They have gotten into the habit of running around the corner to get a Slurpee, but must be back for first pitch.
The bulk of game-watching is done in front of a wall of 15 46-inch flat screens, called the Cave Monster. Watching seven or eight games at a time can be dizzying, especially when trying to follow each one.
Ashley Chavez, a Giants fan from California, gave the best advice: "I look for a windup," she said.
But Mack told the truth.
"You rely a lot on replay," he said.
Contact Michael Vitez at 215-854-5639 or mvitez@phillynews.com or on Twitter @michaelvitez
