Can a love for baseball be inherited?

My time of year has arrived for what has now reached 50. That's because 1956 marked the first time in my life that baseball assumed a station of importance. While it's no longer nearly as much fun as it was from 1956 to 1967, I still love it.

I got to thinking recently, wondering just who in my family might have been the most responsible for pointing me in that direction. Or was it inherited?

I'm sure a lot of you who know my family think it was probably my dad, Joe. Not really. He liked the game all right and made sure I could be as close to it as I wanted, but Joe's sports were football, golf and horse racing.

My mom became a baseball fan in 1972 and remained one until her death in 1998. My mom said she fell in love with the game the first time we drove past the new Royals Stadium on I-70 as it was going up. There was something about the huge crown that would become the scoreboard. It did something to her. Her brother was a lifelong baseball fan.

Then, there was my grandmother, Not Joe's mom who died in 1992, but Lula Brockman, who died in 1976 at the age of 86. Here was a woman whose life spanned separate eras for certain. I remember sitting in her living room one Sunday afternoon in July of 1969 when we heard the words, "Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed." She merely shook her head and muttered, "My, my." She was born in Kingfisher, Okla., Indian Territory in 1889. Her adventurer father was in the famous Oklahoma land rush when they opened the Cherokee Strip and her first travels were by stage coach.

But she became a baseball fan after moving to South Dakota where they would go to the Mitchell Corn Palace on Saturday night and dance to Lawrence Welk. On Sunday afternoon it was the car races and an old time driver named Barney Oldfield. Through the week it was baseball. A school teacher, she pitched to the students, Sioux Indians.

However sadly, my grandmother was a Yankee fan. And she was the first member of my family who actually sat down and talked baseball with me. Her favorite players were Mickey Mantle, and for reasons known only to her, Dale Long.

I'll never forget the day Don Larsen pitched the perfect game against Brooklyn in the '56 World Series. After watching the game on TV at school, I rode my bicycle over to my grandparents' house after the game and all my grandmother wanted to talk about was the game and what Larsen had just done. My grandfather, Dr. E.F. Brockman was a Cincinnati Reds fan and paid little attention to us.

In later years, my grandmother was no longer able to attend Kansas City Athletics games or go to Starlight Theater, two of her favorite things. She had mentioned how she would one more time like to ride on a speedboat like she did when she was young. She was nearly 80, but dearly loved the speedboat ride I took her on on Mother's Day, 1968.

As we coasted through the no wake zone she said, "I know how much you miss the A's and this is going to be a long summer for you." Yeah, the A's had left for Oakland and there was no baseball that summer.

Then came the strikes and my grandmother was still alive for the first one in 1972.

I'll always wonder if it was from her I got my love for the game. Do you inherit such a thing? My dad's father was maybe a bigger fan than I. And my nephews: Chase Owen was a three-year baseball letterman at Nevada High School and although his brother, Corey, wasn't that great a player, he lives close to Kauffman Stadium and watches the Royals whenever possible. Maybe there is a baseball gene they just haven't located yet.