Opinions in Paradise -Athletic exploits pale when faced with beanball

That’s not to say I wouldn’t have a bit to boast about. There’s the basketball and swimming, flag football and tennis, soccer and softball, even ultimate Frisbee. Yeah, I’ve had my hand in just about every pot but one — baseball.

I’d like to think I never fully immersed myself in the sport because it was too slow for my liking. Save softball — which I merely dabbled in anyway — everything I’ve played involved a sort of perpetual motion that inspired surges of adrenaline and releases of endorphins. But baseball, there was just too much standing around in baseball.

Thing is, that’s probably not the most honest explanation for my failure to pursue the national pastime.

Realistically, I think my love died when I was 12, and got beaned by Jeffrey Swilling’s attempt at a fastball during my first year of baseball that wasn’t coach-pitch. It’s a phenomenal thing that 13 years later I can remember the Sunday afternoon with such clarity.

I was visiting my dad for the summer in Eugene, Ore., and, having just finished soccer season, needed something to fill my time. Pops suggested baseball to which I replied in a negative tone.

The next day I was on a team.

The fateful Sunday fell about four weeks into the season. It was my third time at bat on the afternoon. I’d hit a single and triple to that point, so I approached the plate with some confidence.

The first pitch was a ball inside; the second pitch hit the dirt and came to rest near the backstop. Jeffrey was flustered, so I guessed I was going to get a gimmie right in my wheelhouse, just so he could say he’d thrown a strike.

No joke, Swilling’s family lived three doors down from my dad. Jeff and I played basketball together and went swimming in the Willamette River. We gawked at seventh-grade girls and returned soda cans and beer bottles at a nickel apiece for spending money.

So, I was understandably surprised when his third pitch of my third at-bat left his right hand with seeming hatred and headed for my chin. I raised up on my toes in hopes of protecting my face and absorbed the full impact of the pitch in my left shoulder. I can’t lie to you, I folded to the ground like a narcoleptic, moaning and wailing like a hungry toddler. In retrospect, the person I pitied most that afternoon was my dad. All the other fathers were looking at him like he’d raised some pansy. I remember he just gave those men a shoulder shrug as if to say, “Hey, he lives with his mother most of the year.”

And I did. And at that moment I yearned for her. Man, I was a pansy.

To my credit, the injury was assessed as a deep muscle bruise — not exactly a chipped nail. But, to this day, I wish I’d been able to abstain from moaning and wailing.

Jeffrey and I didn’t talk for a few days, but, as 12 year olds are prone to do, we eventually rediscovered grounds for friendship. Unfortunately, he still rehashes this story when I’m in Eugene visiting my dad. Friends can be cruel.

Needless to say, that Sunday is about the time my love of baseball frittered away.

I have no problem taking a charge on the basketball court, or taking a shoulder in the gut on the flag-football field. I regularly push myself to the point of nausea in the swimming pool. Truth is, I now have a fondness for aggressive play; there’s something undeniably cathartic about it.

But standing 60 feet from another man, whom I may or may not trust, as he prepares to throw, in my general direction, a small hard sphere with as much velocity as he can muster still prickles my skin.

And major leaguers on down to little leaguers surely shudder too. They just have the courage to stand in there hoping to complete one of the more difficult tasks in sport: the elusive basehit.

So, my hat goes off to them.

Until I can shoulder up to the plate and take one on the chin for the team, I’ll continue to forego bragging about my athletic prowess.

You are all quite fortunate.