As I remember the story…three generations of women in a family are sitting around a dinner table. It’s the first time the youngest, in her late twenties, is hosting a family meal. As the main course, a beautiful beef roast, is brought to the table for carving, the grandmother asks why the end of the roast is already cut off.

The hostess answers that this was the way her mother always prepared roasts. The hostess’s mother remarks that she always did this because her mother always cut the end off, then the grandmother explains that she only did this because the roasting pan she had was small.

I thought about this story many times when I was traveling in Argentina. Not so much because of culinary methods but because I often witnessed how sports traditions run in families  — often without question.

Almost every conversation with a local host or taxi driver included a single, simple question: La Boca or River Plate?

Of course, this question is meant to uncover which Buenos Aires football team a person swears his allegiance to.

River Plate (named after the Rio de la Plata, the estuary that separates Argentina from Uruguay) is actually the older of the two teams, but the Juniors, from the colorful barrio (neighborhood) of La Boca, first settled by Italian immigrants in the early 20^th century, is probably the most famous team outside of Buenos Aires. Both teams have many titles and trophies to their credit.

Nacho, our guide, was a big River Plate fan. If we were engaged in an activity with a local family, he would invariably raise the question with our hosts, even with their children: La Boca or River Plate?

Hi fives or quick attempts to change subjects followed.

When we asked Nacho why he was such a big River Plate fan, he replied that his father was. He couldn’t think of an additional reason.

It made me think that our allegiances to certain sports teams, like the shapes of our noses or tendency to save or spend, if not determined by our genes, is at least so ingrained by family influences that by the time we’re nine, we can’t imagine rooting for another team.

I know of such a cross-town rivalry by direct experience. In Chicago, baseball fans are either Cubs or White Sox fans. Though Larry and Gary Foster, evil twins that tormented me during second grade, were Sox fans and I have bad associations with them, I think the biggest reason I bleed Cubbie blue blood is because my Uncle George loved the Cubs. And I loved Uncle George.

I don’t think that choosing a team for lifelong devotion can be predicted by race or economic status or even by neighborhood. (Nacho didn’t live in the Belgrano neighborhood where River Plate’s stadium has been located since 1938.)

I’ve known people that chose their team because they liked their uniform and others that were inspired by particular players or chose their team due to the pressures of their geography. But, for the most part, I think people choose to be fans of teams because of family traditions.

And in a way, isn’t your fellow La Boca supporters or River Plate rooters or Cub fans your family? Your tribe? I saw how happy the Argentinians I saw were when they discovered someone else who cheered for the same team.

We choose our teams, but in the families we’re born into, maybe most of this choice is made for us already. It’s enlivening to have a champion to cheer for and a rival to cheer against. It’s fun to see this same truth play out in different countries.

That palpable joy can be seen when a person – anywhere – connects with a fellow fan is no small thing.