If you wanted to set up an experiment to groom a lifelong baseball fan, you would have created my childhood.

I first fell in love with baseball during the magical 1998 Yankees season. As far as introductory baseball seasons go, picking up with Jeter, Rivera, O’Neil, Strawberry, Cone, Wells and the gang is pretty damn good. I still don’t think I’ve ever felt as connected to any team in any sport.

The years wore on, a couple more championships, and the greatest highs and lows any team encountered during the early aughts, all culminating in the 2009 championship as I watched from my high school science class – the teacher was enough of a fan to let us watch during class.

During these years I was all about Yankees baseball, and the league at large. I could flip on a game between the Padres and the Astros and be excited I was lucky enough to witness baseball that day.

Then I discovered the NBA.

When A-Rod might launch a homer in the MLB to raucous applause in Yankee Stadium, slowly 'round the bases and soak it all in with a polite curtain call, Deandre Jordan could ignite the Staples Center by doing to something to Brandon Knight that I still don’t think he’s recovered from.

There is something about the visceral nature of a straight-up career-ending dunk that just can’t be had from anything in baseball.

Once you’ve begun watching NBA religiously and you're used to the Warriors chucking up a million threes a game, it becomes really tough to watch two home runs in a game and be super excited by how ‘electric’ a baseball team is.

The journey from MLB fan to NBA stan is easy, you start by flipping the channel from a baseball playoff game during a commercial to an early-season NBA game. Then you flip back to baseball a little too late. It happens gradually, and before you know it you don’t flip back to the MLB game anymore.

Now you check in with boxscore every now and then like I do.

I only realized the Yankees clinched yesterday, though I know that Frank Ntlikina has gained 15 pounds this offseason because I attended the Knicks Town Hall.

Times are changing, and I have no clue what baseball is gonna do about it.