I cannot recall if I always loathed all things Boston. Perhaps I did. Being a Lakers fan in the 1960s would have been enough to sour a right-thinking person on Boston. The Celtics: Good, but also really lucky.

If I were ambivalent about the Boston Red Sox, the Boston (now New England) Patriots and the Boston Bruins … I do not actually remember. The Red Sox usually didn’t matter, and neither did the Patriots, and the Bruins played hockey, so …

For some years now, however, I reflexively root against all Boston teams — most certainly the Red Sox in the current World Series.

Why might that be?

–Boston has won enough lately. More than enough. The Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 and 2007. The Celtics in 2008. The Bruins in 2011. The Patriots won the Super Bowl at the end of the 2001, 2003 and 2004 seasons. Has any other U.S. market had winners in all four major sports since the turn of the century? Uh, no. Can’t think of one that has won in even three sports.

–Boston fans are profoundly annoying. In short, it comes down to this: “We are the best fans in the world. Period.” Most informed, most concerned about demonstrating their thorough-going fandom (including arriving early and leaving late). Who judges who are the best fans in the world? Bostonians, apparently. Also, as a colleague recently put it: “Boston fans are convinced that no one suffers like they do.” That’s true, and ridiculous.

–Boston teams are far too self-aware. There was the cowboy-up thing of the 2004 Red Sox, the Tom Brady-as-hipster-popstar thing of the past decade, the ubuntu nonsense of the 2008 Celtics and the current Red Sox have the beard thing. Boston teams don’t just play, they have to have a shtick.

–Bill Simmons. The most prominent sports writer of this century is a shameless Boston honk. He writes on national topics on the Big Four sports, but his Boston bias is always there. It permeates everything he does. And if you are a regular reader of Simmons, and he has lots of them, you may have grown sick of every team in the city.

Boston has pretty much usurped New York as the home of teams Right Thinking Americans love to hate. New York is still NYC-centric. Of course it is. But it’s New York, not provincial and tweedy and soggy Boston.

So, I am a very big St. Louis Cardinals fan, just now.

I don’t hold high hopes for them. If they needed six games to beat the Dodgers, well, that’s not a good thing. They were horrendously bad in Game 1, but they salvaged Game 2, and if they can take two of three in St. Louis, they have a chance to win one of the final two in Fenway. (The greatest ballpark ever, remember.)

The Cardinals have outstanding fans, great history (more World Series victories than any other National League team), and though I am not usually a fan of red uniforms, there is something about the white in the Cardinals’ home jerseys that seems impossibly white. (The Dodgers have the same blinding-white unis, and I don’t know how they do it.)

So, yes: Go Cardinals.