As his 80th birthday approaches, Neil Diamond reminisces about Pete Seeger, the Everly Brothers and how a baseball team’s desertion led him to the guitar

I was born and raised in Brooklyn, and for me the most important aspect of growing up there was the Dodgers baseball team. Everybody in Brooklyn loved the Dodgers. They were the underdog but we were loyal. I followed the games closely, with dreams that they would win the World Series and be recognised as the champions I knew they were.