39 and afraid of the ball

I never played sports on an organized team. Most of my friends would say, "that's obvious," whenever I have participated in a variety of intramural sporting events--which is to say, whenever they were desperate and needed an extra body. Allow me to provide you with two examples of my inadequacy.

1) I am afraid of the ball. Many years ago, when Cyndi and I were still childless, it seemed like a good idea to join my friends, Javier and Dave, in a good old fashioned game of catch. I didn't have a mitt, but luckily Dave had an extra. We went out to an empty parking lot and began tossing a league ball back and forth to one another. More specifically, Dave and Jav played catch, I played, "holy shit the ball is coming at you, get out of the way." I spent most of the time shagging missed balls. I think my fear stems from when I was five years old. I was watching my older brothers play a game of baseball in the field next to our house. My brother, Ira, was up to bat. For some reason, I felt it was a smart idea to watch the game from about 20 feet to the right of home plate. When Ira hit the ball, and subsequently tossed the bat in my direction, hitting me directly in the face, sending me crying and running home, my face bleeding very badly. While I should technically be afraid of bats, my fear trickled down to balls.

2) I stink at basketball. It may have something to do with my 5'4 3/4" frame, but I am very inept on the court. So much so that once when I was playing a game of basketball with my friends from college (Jav and Dave included), I was kicked out of the game because I kept missing all of my shots. Oh, and because I couldn't block anybody, and everyone scored on me. It was so pathetic that even the opposing team agreed with the banishment. I also played on an intramural basketball team at Loyola. They only gave me the ball once, and what did I do with it? I was so nervous that when I started to dribble toward our basket, my feet gave out, I fell flat on my face, and the other team successfully stole the ball and scored. Pathetic.

The good news is the bad athletic ability seems to skip a generation. While so far Frederic is not being scouted by any major league teams or the NBA, he's making some great strides and shows promise. And he enjoys himself. In fact, today, during his little league team's final playoff game, I heard him say to one of him teammates, "Don't be so upset. It's just a game and we're having fun, right?" Sometimes I think he needs a little more of a competitive spirit in him, but I am glad that when he makes a mistake, or when his team loses, he takes it all in stride. He literally dusts himself off and gets himself ready for the next play.

He has taught me many lessons (the whole, "old dog, new trick" kind of thing), and today, when his team was eliminated from the playoffs and his season ended, I was just as proud of him as I would have been if they won.