Then the Los Angeles Dodgers seemed like a promising choice for us. I’ve always loved the faded blue of the ballpark’s walls and the coziness of sitting in the weather-beaten pastel seats in Chavez Ravine as the desert night’s chill rolls into the ballpark. Why not just pick the team that has the best ballpark and that, thanks to Southern California’s large Korean-American population and the team’s 20-year history of signing Korean players, probably has the most fans who look like me and my daughter? I didn’t want her to share the neuroses of minority Boston fans who cringe knowingly when Adam Jones, the black center fielder for the Orioles, gets called a racial slur from the Fenway stands, as happened this spring, and then cringe again when Boston fans and sportswriters come clumsily to their city’s defense.

My parents came to this country as immigrants with a vision of assimilation; our trips to Fenway to see the Red Sox were meant to make me comfortable in Ameri­can settings where we might be the only ones like us there — and also to normalize the sight of a Korean immigrant and his son cheering on the home team. Since then, I’ve always been drawn to any subculture in which acceptance seems to require no more than buying a T-shirt (hence my Phish and Grateful Dead phases), and while much of my adulthood has been spent questioning my family’s blind optimism about acculturation, I still believe sports are best enjoyed without too much thought.

Choosing the Dodgers felt too considered and preachy. When my daughter is confronted by some future date, boss or stranger with the question ‘‘Why are you a Dodgers fan?’’ I didn’t want her answer to be: ‘‘Well, take a look at this census report. As you can see, more than 100,000 Koreans live in Los Angeles.’’ The only answers likely to make sense — especially if she ends up not caring about sports deeply and wants to quickly move the conversation onto another topic — are ‘‘I was born there’’ and ‘‘My family is from there.’’ My wife is from Newport, R.I., which meant that the only two baseball options for us were the Mets and the Red Sox.

So, at least as long as these things are under my influence, my daughter will be a Red Sox fan as her mother and her feckless father once were. A lapsed tradition that goes back to the mid-1980s — my first memory, as it happens: Paul Molitor, then of the Milwaukee Brewers, hitting a leadoff home run in Fenway Park as my father and I walked to our seats — will be revived and passed along to my daughter. Of course, fandom, like any inheritance, does not have to be accepted or embraced. I can imagine any number of happy accidents or family relocations that might lead to her rooting for the Cubs, Yankees, Mariners or whomever. If that happens, I’ll follow her lead, because my own roots, both in fandom and in the country, are shallow. My own hang-ups have made it difficult for me to fully invest in a place and a culture, and I’m excited about not really knowing where she may take our family. Should she reject the Red Sox and become inspired by the United States women’s national soccer team or the New York Liberty, or even if her interest in sports never goes beyond her own play, and I spend my afternoons driving her from practice to practice, her choices will become our family traditions, and, by extension, her birthright.