There is an old Jewish joke about how, on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean, you will find two synagogues: the one we go to, and the one we don’t go to. Yesterday, I took my son to Yankee Stadium for the first time. I am a Mets fan, and, for more than a year, I tried to ignore his kindergarten drawing that’s up on our kitchen wall, for an assignment about dreams, of the House that Ruth Built.

And much as I would like to blame peer pressure or the Wilpons for my son’s apostasy, a psychologist who I consulted last year for this Father’s Day post told me that the primary influence on a child’s fan preferences is his father. Since then, I’ve been exerting my soft power. We’ve watched a lot of both New York teams on television before bedtime, and this winter, while the YES network was showing the Nets, he got interested in the rebroadcast Mets Classics on SNY. So when my old high-school English teacher invited us to join him and his son for Curtis Granderson Bat Day, I felt it was time.