At 10, I considered Roberto Clemente a personal hero for his style and personality as much as his greatness, despite his dying more than 12 years before my birth. As a lifelong Warriors fan, I was forced to appreciate small pleasures in the context of greater failure from an early age. And, while I wasn’t exactly sure why, I always liked Steve Young more than Joe Montana while admitting that the latter was the far superior player. The problem was that I didn’t know exactly how to express that appreciation, and my devotion to my favorite teams and athletes just registered as obsessive interest that bordered on psychosis.