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Come now, ye faithful, to the temple of possibilities, this church of hope. Come with a joyous heart. Come with a belief in miracles.

Come with cash, and a photo ID. For ye gather at the Chop House to watch your Atlanta Braves. To raise your suds to the skies, to howl as one.

Pouya Dianat/AJC (ENLARGE)

The view from the 'Top of the Chop' the upper deck of the The Chop House - home to brews, food and good times.

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To believe, again, that the good guys wear red-and-blue caps. And the other guys? Bums.

"Go Braaaaaaaaaaaves!" Diana Hamilton yelled as she swilled the last of her Bacardi and Coke and leaned on the metal bannister where the Chop House offers a balcony view of Turner Stadium's outfield. It was the home opener for the Braves, the Pittsburgh Pirates visiting — winning, too.

Hamilton, a dental hygienist who moved to Atlanta four years ago from South Georgia, is a regular at the Chop House. It's a two-story joint with covered dining on the first floor and a concrete deck on the second. It's the size of two big homes — 8,000 square feet.

Hamilton squeezed herself into about 2 of those feet and admired the view. The outfield, where the Pirates prowled, was cut short as a putting green. The grass shone under the lights and evening mist. It looked like an emerald, glistening under gauze.

Why the Chop House? Hamilton shook her cup. "Well, I am a woman, so I don't drink beer," she said. "That means liquor. And there are only two places here where you can get liquor."

There's the 755 Club, which is hotel-lobby swank. The other is the Chop House, which is just fine for Alex Paulk and Daniel Grentz. They got to the game Monday in time to get a prime spot — against the rail, a table at their side. Each held a Miller Lite.

"It's the atmosphere here," said Grentz, a nurse from Douglasville. He's 30. "You don't know anybody here, but you always find someone to talk to."

Paulk, 25 and a resident of Marietta, nodded. He and Grentz attended church and high school together, and have been coming to Braves games for years. In the 2007 season, they went to about 40.

"If we don't get field-level seats," said Paulk, a contractor, "we come up here."

The Chop House is a democratic spot. It's the sort of place where the cheap-seat crowd goes, as well as folks with private parking places and elevators that open for a select few. It's where women in fashionably stressed jeans bump against guys with a Skoal ring on their denim-clad butts.

It's a good place to keep a close eye on a certain hot outfielder, even on a 50-degree night, agreed Atlantans Melissa Taylor and Taylor Brooke. They made the 3 1/2 hour trip from Tuscaloosa, where both are students at the University of Alabama, just to elbow their way in to the Chop House. Somewhere along the way, Taylor found an Indian-style headdress. It roosted atop her head like a tie-dyed chicken.

"Jeff Francoeur," she declared, "is hot!" Brooke took a sip of her cranberry vodka. "Had to come for Francoeur," she said.

There's more to hanging out on a crowded deck than just watching outfielders in tight pants, said psychologist and author David Eigen. People need to come together, even if only temporarily, he said. It's a human thing.

"Part of it is male bonding," Eigen said. "There's also the feeling, that, 'Hey, if that is the cool place, then I want to be there.' "

Few places are cooler than the Chop House deck, said Angel Touwsma. The Atlanta resident plopped a tinseled tiara on her 37-year-old head and announced to friends and strangers that she was celebrating her birthday. Husband David Touwsma and 20 pals came along to cheer with her.

"I've had people I don't know come up to wish me happy birthday," said Touwsma, her smile as bright as her head wear. "I've had people buy me shots!"

David Touwsma, who co-owns a string of retail shops with his wife, arranged the soiree. Season-ticket-holders, the Touwsmas bounce about the Ted like foul balls. Some days, they sit in field-level seats. Other times they settle in for the sumptuous comfort of the 755 Club, which gets its name from Hank Aaron's string of homers.

And then, on some days. ...

Touwsma gestured at the swirl of people. "It's good to see it [the stadium] from different perspectives," he said.

Few perspectives beat the view from dead center, said John Mentzer of Alpharetta. "Ever since I came of drinking age, I have come here," said Mentzer, 23.

The view looks good to Steve Perrins of Doraville, too. Perrins, 27, a sales and marketing agent, tilted a Miller Lite and took it all in — the lights, the crowd, night's dark dome.

"It's good times, great people and good beer," he said. "Right?"

Right, ye faithful. So come to the temple where anything can happen. Be prepared to pray, to watch our guys play. Don't forget your photo ID.