COLUMN: Straight From the Hog's Eye - Playing sports doesn't come easy

With the World Series recently concluding, football season going strong, and the NBA back in action, it seems like an appropriate time to reflect upon how terrible I am at sports.

My athletic inability wasn’t always for a lack of trying. One of my big Christmas gifts one year was a basketball goal. We set it up at the end of the driveway, and I spent countless hours out there trying to perfect my free throws.

Basketball was always my favorite sport, and I still like it the best. Unfortunately, I could never get the hang of it enough to make the team in middle school. I figured that I definitely wasn’t a weakling and that I’d spent enough years in the past running around the yard, kicking the soccer ball around and doing other activities, so I’d be able to tough my way through tryouts.

After a night of laps, sprints and drills, I found out that wouldn’t be the case. My muscles were screaming at me, and I didn’t know how I’d make it through a season of such physical exertion, much less a second night of tryouts.

I know I focused too much on the technical aspects of basketball and not the endurance. Basically, I was just all-around awful at the game. Nonetheless, I do admire my younger self for having the nerve to try out, even though I knew there was a 98 percent chance I was going to be cut (and I was). I wouldn’t even dream of wasting my time now, and I’d be too afraid of looking like a discombobulated fool.

I tried my hand at other sports through the years. I played tennis for one season, and I think I did that mainly because so many of my friends were on the team. I liked it, but once again, I just couldn’t get the hang of it. Even the basic technique of following all the way through while swinging seemed to elude me.

Later in high school, I picked up soccer again. I use the word “again” somewhat loosely; in full disclosure, my soccer experience was only from playing on a few teams in elementary school, but I remember being decent. In fact, soccer might have been the only sport I was OK at playing. I spent a good deal of time in the fifth and sixth grades playing along with my friends from Belgium, and as Europeans they were certainly more familiar with the game as Europeans than were the other kids at school.

As I got older, however, I lost any ability I’d had. I partly blame the soccer program at the school I was attending at the time. One year, and I think it was by fifth or sixth grade, I passed the age limit for students who could sign up for soccer. Every time I moved up a grade, however, they would begin offering soccer to the grade level I’d just passed.

Lately, I’ve considered taking up one of the aforementioned sports as a hobby. I imagine I’ll start watching more basketball again, but I’ll certainly remain only a spectator. I don’t really know anyone who plays soccer or a good place to play the game. So maybe I need to find a tennis buddy and hit the courts again.

As soon as I find my tennis racket or get a new one, that is. And remember how to serve and return the ball.

This is going to be an uphill battle.