A topic that comes up, eventually, with everyone who plays fantasy baseball or football or basketball or soccer …

When a player from your fantasy team meets up with someone from the team you support … to which side do you focus your psychic energy?

Or, making it simple, whom do you want to come out on top at that moment?

Unless you somehow drafted a whole team of Dodgers or Patriots or Bulls or Spurs, it will happen. The guy on the team you drafted going up against the team you rooted for as a child.

Broaching this “what if?” is a sure way to get a vigorous, perhaps even angry (perhaps even insulting) argument rolling. So don’t bring it up at Thanksgiving dinner or at a wedding. Unless you really like to argue, even in incongruous settings.

The two sides of this go something like this.

–If you have declared your support for a particular team, then you must support them at all times — up to and including when they are going against the team you drafted. It’s easy. Are you a fan or are you not?

–A fantasy team is a very personal thing, almost a demonstration of your understanding of the whole of the sport. So, of course you are going to root for the players you picked, even when they are going against your childhood team. It’s nothing personal and it certainly isn’t forever. It doesn’t mean you no longer care what happens to the team you chose as a kid. You’re just temporarily suspending fandom. For this one at-bat, this one day on defense.

To which the “real-team first” people will say “you can’t pick and choose when you are a fan” to which the other side will say “of course, you can. Just like I don’t support a team when it is led by players/coaches/owners I don’t like.”

Followed by: “There you have it; you are not a fan because a fan is forever.

And so on.

Where do I come down on this?

I let my brain choose. I just do an inventory of how I feel …

And, generally, I find myself pulling for my fantasy player against my real team.

With reservations.

I don’t want my fantasy player to have a career day against my team. But it would be nice if he did a little something, even against my team. Yes, even if it helps the “team my fantasy player plays for” defeat my team.

I am also less likely to want my chosen player to beat up on my childhood team — when I’m not actually watching the game.

(And for those people who play fantasy ball for money, and I do not, I imagine it’s easier still to come down on the side of your guy.)

I am prepared to concede that this will outrage “true” fans. The “my franchise right or wrong” people.

Well, sorry.

I also reserve the right not to support a team when its best players are jerks or the owner is evil. (See: Dodgers/Frank McCourt.)

That’s where I am. My chosen team first, my rooting team second.

If that leaves me outside the pale of some “fan” definitions, so be it.