Don't tell my father, but it's the Yankees. I lived in Boston too long. My wife is a die-hard Red Sox fan.

My father grew up a Yankees fan. His father took him and his brothers to Yankee Stadium (four hours each way by car). They saw them as "the team with fellow Italians on it" so it could do no wrong.

It's like when my parents tell me they love Jay Leno and the entire argument ends with "because he's one of us." Aging baby boomer? Sure.

I should mention that both of my parents have degrees in philosophy. However my father has this huge blind spot for anything Italian-American. It's very much a thing in my hometown. Meucci's invention somehow mattered more than Bell's. People hated "us guineas", so we must hate them back -- even though we're now clearly honkies.

I was seriously hoping Buffalo would get the expansion NL team back in the late Eighties (what became the frickin' Marlins). I wanted anything that would allow upstate New Yorkers to root for a major-league baseball team not from New York City.

Note that I'm much more a Dodgers fan than a Red Sox fan. I spent too much time avoiding Red Sox fans, their ire, and their problems with my commute when I lived there.