Famed political columnist and avid Boston Red Sox fan Charles Krauthammar posed this question last week in a commentary he wrote: Is a lifelong fan of one team allowed to jump ship and cheer for another team when that person moves to a new town?

Before this year, my resounding answer to this would have been "No!" As evidence, I use every carpet-bagging Cardinals fan who came to Saint Louis University sometime over the past four years from a town nowhere near here and allegiances tied completely to the fate of another team.

Fans of the Mariners, Mets, Marlins and Padres, and all points in between, came to St. Louis and, lo and behold, four months and 80 wins into the season, they were "lifelong" and "die-hard" Cardinals fans. Then at the stroke of midnight on that dark night late in October of last year, they disappeared, not to be heard from for another five months.

This was the pessimistic side of me showing through and I must admit that, for the first time in a very long time, I was wrong.

Now, not two weeks after their first home game in 34 years and an entire month away from taking up a permanent residence in the town itself, I have a confession to make: I am a Nationals fan. The Washington Nationals are my next hometown's team and, as such, I am planning accordingly. "Go Nats!"

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, because I've got some good reasons. As I've stated before, in previous commentaries, there is not one good reason to be a fan of one particular team. However, there are two reasons that we have come to accept for pulling for one grossly overpaid group of men over another and those are as follows: 1) family and 2) geography.

To explore the family aspect of "fandom" I will use a personal analogy.

My father is a die-hard Cubs fan. This was something that was passed on to me at a young age and was transparent in an undying respect for Harry Carey, Ryne Sandberg and Mark "Amazing" Grace.

So needless to say I pulled for the Cubs because, as we all know, and which has been reinforced by many "priceless" MasterCard commercials and a certain episode of "Family Guy," baseball is what brings fathers and sons together.

The second aspect is that of geography, i.e., you pull for the team that plays closest to where you live. I was born in New York, but moved at an early age to Kansas City, Mo., so I have split allegiances to these two polar-opposite teams. In an ironic twist that illustrates this point, on the day I was born, the hottest day of the year in 1983, my soon-to-be-beloved Yankees lost to my soon-to-be-beloved Royals. A sign of things to come.

So now, just a month away from seeing my first baseball game in a football stadium, as the Nats are playing in RFK Stadium, I can add to my list, and hopefully eventually place at or near the top of it, the Washington Nationals. In my mind, it's a perfect fit.

There are very few people in Washington, D.C., that are actually from Washington, D.C. Most "residents" of the district come from other places like San Diego; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Portland, Ore.; and the other Portland, Maine and they all have their own allegiances. Heck, most of them even keep their own state's license plates on their cars, because few people stay in D.C. forever.

And that is the beauty of being a Washington Nationals fan: You get to rent the allegiance to the team for awhile, then when you move back to wherever you came from, you drop it from memory, never to speak of it again, and you reclaim your previous allegiances.

There is a simple reason about why and how fans like myself will be able to pull for the Nationals for an extended amount of time without actually building up allegiances, and it goes hand-in-hand with their eternal moniker as "loveable losers," with the emphasis on the losing part.

The Washington Nationals are bad. Really bad. And unless you are a Cubs or a Red Sox fan, the best concept that actually builds allegiances to teams is winning. And this explains the ease with which fans like me will be able to swap allegiances back and forth like flipping a light switch.

The Nationals will be enjoyable, they just won't ever do anything that will cause me to have a vested interest in them. So to answer Krauthammar's question, again, I say this: It is absolutely permissible for a person who moves to another town to pick up an allegiance to that town's sports franchise-on two conditions.

First, an allegiance to your new team cannot conflict with that of a pre-existing allegiance; this is illustrated by the fact that people from Chicago cannot be Cardinals fans. And second, once you move away from that town, you cannot keep your allegiance to that team over that of a team already playing in your new town: i.e., if I next move to Philadelphia, I would have to cease to be a Nationals fan and pick up the Phillies as my new team.

The only alternative to all of this is to stay loyal to one team and one team only, no matter the peril you might incur for openly pulling for them in a hostile city. And that is the beauty of being a Nationals fan: No one hates them. Heck, no one dislikes them.

They are the team that everyone wants to play.

So from now on, I am a "lifelong" Nationals fan. At least for the next few years anyway.