Like many boys and girls I joined town sports leagues. They handed me a bat and a ball and a glove. I knew what I was to do with each. But when it came to doing any, let alone at the same time, I proved - let's be kind - ineffective. I swung wildly, early, late, high, low, erratically, and often. I rarely made it to on base and if I did it was because I got beaned by someone who pitched worse than I. On base, I'd try to run, but I was never sure what I was supposed to be paying attention to; my timing was, shall we say, off. As a fielder, I remember distinctly catching a pop fly with my forehead. Playing defense required things like speed, agility, and something called arm strength. Before long I was consistently playing right field. As youth baseball coaches across the world know, right field is where you put your worst player. There just aren't many power lefty tykes or kid righties hitting the opposite way. I rarely saw a play. I did though incur the ire of teammates and fans when a that was ball hit my way went unnoticed because I was looking for four leaf clovers.
Season by season I played every town sport. I tied my legs in knots playing soccer, tripping on the ball, players, and my own two feet. In basketball, the lay-up was a shot I'd make 1 in 10 times. The further away from the basket, the more likely I'd miss the backboard, to say nothing of the rim or the bottom of the net. The concept of dribbling, passing, shooting, and retaining possession of the ball was straightforward. My execution was anything but. There wasn't a player on either team who wanted me to have the ball.
I think the only reason I am probably still alive today is because our town was so small it didn't have a football team then.
If you wanted to win you DID NOT want me on your team. I heard all the names and they were all pretty accurate. Goof, Klutz, Spaz, Dork, Retard. My eyeglasses (usually taped together) didn't help the 'more creative' name callers. "Four-eyed Spaz Attack." "Blind Retard Ring-a-Ling-a-Ding-Bat." Ironically, my social life didn't suffer. Indeed I was well-regarded and had many friends. I was fun and best of all I was funny. I might not have been an agile athlete, but my I had a quick wit. Still it was not enough to keep these same friends from necessarily leaving me the last person standing when captains chose the teams.
As if it wasn't hard enough for me to control my appendages, puberty (coming seemingly years after all my friends) brought on a monster growth spurt. I grew nearly a half a foot in three months. Even in that brief time, classmates who I saw in the summer didn't recognize me by fall. My feet seemed miles from my hips and hands that rarely acted in concert were no longer even in the same time zone. I tripped over my feet, stumbling over curbs, rocks, and even the plain old flat floor. And I would have been the first one to tell you how funny it was. I played the goofball better than its inventor. This all might sound like the laments of an unhappy childhood, it most surely is not. There were painful times to be sure - several ball/foot/knee to the groin moments. Believe me, I wanted to be more coordinated. And to this day I wish my parents had passed down more athletic genes. Luckily, they blessed me by giving me a terrific sense of humor.
It wasn't that I didn't want to play these sports, it was just that I wasn't really able to. At least not at the same pace as my more agile peers. They could control their bodies in ways that I had (have?) yet to discover. I wasn't in aerobic shape to run, winded within a half-mile. By the time I'd reached high school the town recreational mill had turn me into grist. But I still wanted to play sports.
I realized that I needed a simpler sport or at least one with less variables. I was on the golf team in high school. There were no try-outs and there were no cuts. I never played a single competitive match, but I got to play nine holes for free every day after school. I had to run to keep up with my teammates as it took me usually twice as many strokes to play each hole. Luckily hitting 80 shots over 9 holes allowed me to practice my stroke at double the rate of my fellow golfers. I never got to be a good golfer, so I focused instead on having a good, if unathletic, time. Eventually the repetition improved my stroke, marginally. At last, here was a sport I could almost play! The ball sat still. It wasn't being thrown or hit at me and there weren't other golfers trying to hit it at the same time. It was a start.
In college I willed myself to become an oarsman. Learning how to row - learning the stroke, getting in shape for the very first time of my life, and waking up that early in the morning - was the most significant life change I'd ever made. And again it was the repetitive nature of the stroke that allowed me to persist (and there were no cuts). With the oar locked in position, my feet literally strapped in to a fixed footboard, and my butt planted it a rolling seat, I have few variables to consider. These was a skill I could master. But I was still weaker than to most of my teammates. And that weakness resulted in me catching a boat stopping crab* at the Dad Vail National Championships in 1988, still the worst and most painful moment of my athletic career. Getting in shape took me the better part of four years and by my senior year through (choose one) twists of fate, Providence, destiny, hard-work, good coaching, or coincidence, I found myself sitting in 5-seat of the 1991 New England Heavyweight Mens' Championship boat, a boat that finished a heartbreaking 4th in our division's National Championship.
Since college and to this day, I have been a runner (another repetitive sport!). There have been periods in my life when I've taken as much as years off from the sport, but it pulls me back. And running consistently all these years has to a slight degree improved my overall agility. Today, I can play a friendly game of volleyball, whiffle ball, or even basketball with little if any personal injuries sustained or inflicted. But if it turns into a contest, you still don't want me on your team. Unless you're 8. If you're 8, I am going to be your second or third best player.
*Crab
1 comment:
Was that YOUR crab?! that sukked.
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