I was never any good at sports, although I thought I wanted to be. My Little League career was hampered only by the fact I couldn’t catch, throw, run, or hit. I’m positive I would have been a much better player if I could have done those things. The other members of my team would have appreciated it, too. The majority of them were incensed at the end of the season when I received a trophy for highest batting average. I accidentally hit a single one of my two times at bat, which gave me a .500 average (true). Were he alive, Babe Ruth would have been jealous (true).
Football was another favorite of mine as a youngster. We neighborhood guys always played tackle, not that sissy tag stuff. We were tough and never wore any equipment. None of us had any equipment to wear. Some of the guys were so tough they’d eat their cornflakes without milk. Getting banged around in those games was part of the fun. I managed to avoid that part of the fun by saying, “I’m not allowed to get my clothes dirty,” or “I plan to donate my perfect body to science.”
My fun ended one afternoon when I was actually tackled and ended up on the bottom of a 14-man pileup. Members of both teams piled up on me. When the guys piled off, my glasses were destroyed. No plastic lenses in those days. I had a gash on the bridge of my nose. My mother was not pleased when I came home. My specs were only about two weeks old. I never played football again. The neighborhood tackle games ended soon after anyway when another kid got destroyed and all the parents decided we were nuts and could get permanently killed for life.
My dreams of a career on ice were dashed when some friends and I decided the ice rink at the park was too chewed up and crowded to have a decent skate. We crossed over the railroad tracks and discovered some untouched ice on the frozen Salt Creek. After an intense, three-second perusal, we agreed it would be like skating on glass. I was overcome with heavenly bliss for about three more seconds, until everyone was on the ice. I heard a sound like distant thunder and saw a crack making its way down the middle of the creek, passing right between my feet. Before I could tell everyone not to panic, one of the guys panicked and started to run. The first stomp of his skate broke the ice and the Winter sport of skating became the Summer sport of water polo without a ball. My mother was not pleased when I came home in frozen clothes with underwater vegetation clinging to my shoulder. It took me a week to stop shivering. I never ice skated again. Skating on untested ice ended when all the parents decided we were nuts and could have drowned, thereby permanently killing ourselves for life.
Volleyball seemed like a safe and sane sport. However, I could have made the same contribution to the game by standing on the sidelines reciting Hamlet’s soliloquy or reading from The Book of 101 Aztec Jokes. I hardly ever hit the ball unless it went out of bounds and knocked me off the bench. Our team was generally outmatched, anyway. I did go in once to replace an absent player during semifinals. Our team lost all three games by the same score (true): 21-0. I never played volleyball again. Many of the other team members used the humiliating defeat to spur them on, and they developed into good players. I used the humiliating defeat to remain humiliated. My mother didn’t even care.
Recently, I read that instead of sitting around getting old and complacent with life, stuck in everyday habits, we should maybe join a sports team to strengthen our bodies, stimulate our minds, and boost our self-esteem. My PTSD (Pitiful Traumatic Sports Disasters) and recurring nightmares boosted my self-esteem and the rest of my body into a La-Z-Boy. As I sit there in front of my big screen television watching whatever is on ESPN with a cold, but friendly Bud, maybe some Cheetos, I wistfully contemplate what might have been if I’d pursued my dreams of a career in sports: I would have been dead by now. Permanently.