We rarely get to choose our favorite professional sports teams. Usually they are given at birth, based on location, a family connection, or both. We roll with their fortunes, without asking why. Our teams are like our skin, unshakable. Freedom of choice is not an option.
Yet every now and then, the local team just does not capture us, or it betrays us, and makes us free-agent fans. It usually happens in childhood, as it did for me, which is how I became hopelessly devoted to the Golden State Warriors.
I was born in Philadelphia in 1975 — a baseball and football fan, mostly.