I’ll let you in on a little secret about me that I’m sure you’ve been dying to know: I never played baseball as a kid. Not T-ball, not Little League, not anything. Maybe that makes me something less than the ideal American (I can just imagine Shaun giving me crap as we speak), but it’s the way things worked out.

See, I’ve always played a lot of sports. I did organized basketball and soccer for eight years, and was pretty decent at both. I picked up Ultimate Frisbee in high school and won three intramural titles in college (and was pretty damn good). I tried out for the tennis team in high school despite not having played competitively. Even now, I still play most of those — as well as stuff like racquetball and volleyball. Hell, I was a lineman for football in eighth grade, and I hate/suck at football. I guess I’m kind of a sports junkie.

But baseball never happened. I’ve always liked the game. I can remember watching the Reds sweep the A’s in the 1990 World Series with my dad. I played wiffleball growing up and loved hitting home runs. But somehow I never had the chance to play.

So you can imagine my concern when I had the chance to play on a slow-pitch softball team for work.

Being a fan of the game ended up causing some interesting problems when it came time to actually play it. My head knew what to do in certain situations, like what base to cover on something hit to someone else or what the hell the infield fly rule was, but my body was completely oblivious. Sure, I could get by with athletic ability in some ways, like running the bases well or having good range at short, but that wasn’t going to help me hit the ball.

Turns out I’m not an awful hitter either. The first practice we had as a team, I was hitting liners all over the place. It was only after practice was over that we learned about the whole 8-foot-or-higher arc rule for pitching, which changed things a little — namely, I had to wait like twice as long to swing. Still, I managed to end the season 7-for-12 in six games. Sure, six of those seven hits were singles (plus one double), but I also drew two walks and had four RBIs.

So I played pretty good defense, mixing a few good plays with a couple bad errors. I hit the ball okay. I even managed the team for a few games and set lineups and stuff. All in all, I didn’t embarrass myself, which is about all I could have asked for going in.

The more important thing is that I had fun doing it. I know, it sounds like a trite sports cliche, but it was true. It was another good chance for some exercise, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like to get involved in baseball as a kid. I’m not saying I would have made the major leagues or anything — I’m decent at a lot of sports, but certainly not that good at any of them. But I think it would’ve been fun. And maybe rediscovering some of my missed childhood, even at the extremely old age of 26, isn’t such a bad thing.