The World Series starts tonight (Tuesday). It’s the best time of the baseball season. Having your team play in it is every fan’s greatest hope.

Thirty teams opened spring training in February with the goal of making it through the long season and the playoffs for a chance at a title.

The marathon that is a baseball season is a daily delight when your squad is winning and a seemingly never-ending nightmare when they stumble through another season. Just ask Rockies fans.

So as a lifelong baseball fan, October is my favorite month. Like millions of others, I relish the drama of close games with the season at stake. The World Series is the crown jewel of diamond delights.

So why do I feel so conflicted this year?

The Kansas City Royals are this year’s fan favorite. After 29 years away from the playoffs, the Royals sneaked into the postseason as a wild card and seemed to be done in one, trailing the Oakland A’s 7-3 in the eighth inning of the Wild Card Game.

But the Royals stunned the A’s, and the baseball world, with an amazing comeback and won in 12 innings, vaulting them into the next round. They haven’t lost since.

I started cheering for the Royals in 1972. The first big league game I saw in person was on Sept. 12, 1976, when the Royals, on their way to their first AL West title, crushed the Twins 16-6 in the old Met Stadium in Bloomington, Minn.

It was camera day, and Dad and I got on the field beforehand, where we shook hands with my favorite player, center fielder Amos Otis. That remains a special moment to me.

For the next decade, I was a rabid Royals fan. The team made the playoffs seven times in that decade, winning two pennants and the 1985 World Series led by George Brett’s bat.

And then, nothing. The Royals went on a long walk to oblivion. Still, I followed them, eager for a sign of the team turning things around.

For many of those years, I lived on or near the West Coast. I started following the San Francisco Giants, and they were a colorful and often-successful team.

From Will Clark and the powerful Giants of the 1980s and early ’90s to Barry Bonds and the slugging Giants of the late ’90s and early 2000s, the Giants became my team. I had liked them since Barry’s dad, Bobby Bonds, was their star player in the 1970s.

The Giants have been in the playoffs seven times in the past 18 seasons and this is their fourth pennant during that time. Now focused on pitching and defense, they won titles in 2010 and 2012, much to my delight. Hitting draws fans but pitching wins titles.

Their talented, funny and insightful TV announcing duo of Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow is a major reason I have watched almost every game for more than a decade.

But now, amazingly enough, both of my teams won their league championships. They will compete for the World Series title and I plan to follow every pitch.

In a way, I can’t lose, but I also can’t win. One of my teams is sure to lose.

Changing the team you support is something a lot of people do. The great historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has written of her devotion to the Brooklyn Dodgers when she was a girl, attending games with her dad and following every pitch.

The Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958 and she sought a new team to cheer for then. She became a Boston Red Sox fan as an adult.

My dad grew up listening to the Yankees on the radio and talked of hearing Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig smash homers during World Series play. He later followed the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals, but when the Twins were born in 1961, he supported them and did so for the rest of his life.

But he always had a soft spot for the Yankees, as I do for the Royals. First loves and all, you know.

Several of my friends have commented on this, with some sure my old Royal loyalty will come to the surface while others, including fellow Giants fans, have told me to stick with the San Francisco squad.

I guess I’ll know how I feel as the games are played. A blizzard hitting Kansas City in the 16th inning of Game 7, with the teams declared co-champions, would be ideal.