The recent posting on passing your passion down to your kids struck a chord with my friend Robbie. With his permission, here's an illustration of how a baseball rooting interest can transcend the generations.

You can imagine how hard it was to get Jason (9) to share my Mets passion, and I was almost there. His whole room is decked out in Mets gear and posters. That is, success until about three weeks ago.

My son had just made his AAA Fall Ball pitching debut. He was very proud of his two scoreless innings, as was I.

Later, we were out to dinner with about ten family members, celebrating a cousin's milestone birthday. We were in a private room in the restaurant, though beside our large round table was an empty table for four.

After we had been seated for about a half hour, in comes the Maitre 'D, leading four large athletes, baseball players all. Yankees, to be exact, led by future Hall of Famer, Andy Pettitte. Jason went apoplectic. With a lot of cajoling, he finally went up to Andy, introduced himself and began to describe (in too much detail) his outing earlier in the day. Pettitte could not have been any more gracious, and agreed to a picture with Jason which now has a prominent place on his bedroom wall.

My Mets are as good as dead in his mind. I lost that battle.

More than anything, I'm just happy that he's got a deep and enthusiastic passion for the game. I couldn't be more proud.

Have a similar story to share? Please post them in the "comments" section of this blog. Remember, the greatest thing you can pass along to your kids is a boundless love of life, and of diversity. The world has room for Mets and Yankee fans.