Sporting life How one hung-over day on the couch changed a lifetime of athletic apathy BY ALAN OLIFSON

When I was seven, I struck out in tee ball. If this doesn’t sound ridiculous to you, you’re probably just not familiar with the game of tee ball. Let me brief you, so you can enjoy mocking me along with everyone else. It’s basically like softball, but instead of pitching, they just set the ball on top of a tube, or tee. Then all you have to do is hit the ball off the tee. According to the T-Ball USA Association, "The elimination of pitching allows children to participate without the fear of being hit by a pitched ball." Unfortunately, the T-Ball USA Association seems to have no plan for how to handle the shame of not being able to hit a stationary ball.

Lacking advice from the sport’s governing body, I was forced to come up with my own coping strategy: quitting tee ball altogether. I developed this strategy minutes before I was supposed to leave for the first game following the "strike-out incident." To my surprise, my dad spared me the "finish what you’ve started" speech, and let me end my tee-ball career in quiet dignity over a bowl of excessively sugared cereal. At the time, I thought he was being gracious and patient. In retrospect, it was probably the happiest day of his life. What dad wants to return to the scene of his son’s tee-ball strike-out? Plus, he was assistant coach, so I’m sure he had some serious explaining to do — after all, one could argue that striking out in tee ball is something you actually have to learn somewhere.

Surprisingly undaunted, my parents soon signed me up for flag football, where I managed to make it almost all the way through the season before asking, "How do I know which way to run if I catch the ball?"

Basically, you can describe my entire relationship with organized sports by using variations of the above stories, simply substituting different rules and equipment.

Some people compensate for lack of athletic skill by obsessively following professional sports. I went the other route, and have spent my life obsessively not following professional sports. By the time I started college, my sports ignorance had become a condition — as unchangeable as the lack of coordination that led to my lack of interest in the first place. "I don’t really follow sports," slipped as naturally off my tongue as "I have brown hair" and "Sorry I’m late."

At first, I wore my naiveté as a badge of honor — as if I had more important things to occupy my time than swilling beer, painting my chest, and watching football. Like swilling beer and painting my chest for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

And I was sincerely confused by sports. It wasn’t just the rules and regulations — though they, too, were puzzling — but the depth of the professional-sports industry itself that confounded me: all the time, money, and energy that went into covering, analyzing, and marketing these games — I just didn’t get it. What about politics, religion, the Big Questions? Why didn’t we, as a country, pursue these areas of life with the same vim and vigor we applied to men throwing balls around? Why didn’t we have Gods of Other Religions trading cards or something?

When the conversation turned to sports I’d either tune out or ask absolutely ridiculous questions, as if to say, "Not only do I have no idea what you’re talking about, but any attempt to educate me will be met with the kind of blanket ridicule that can only be bred of fear and ignorance." Amazingly, my college friends rarely hit me and continued to invite me to Super Bowl parties. (It probably helped that I went to a college in California that actually voted to disband its football team to save money.)

Shortly after college, though, I left my insulated world and spent a few years in the Midwest. FYI: in the hinterlands of Nebraska, not watching football is not a funny quirk. It is an offense of Boys Don’t Cry magnitude. For my own safety, I spent a lot of time nodding and smiling during those years.

But even back in the big, bad city, my self-imposed exile from sports led less to smug satisfaction and more to awkward office banter.

"So, man, you think the Lakers are going to go all the way this year?"

"I have no idea."

"Oh, well ..."

"This is good coffee, though."

"Um, yeah ..."

"Hint of chutney, I think."

"Right, well, see ya."

While I started routinely arriving at meetings five minutes late just to avoid the unwieldy preliminary chitchat, I watched others become fast friends over small talk. Sports fans are never at a loss for something to discuss — the games, players, teams, trades, fantasy leagues, hometown rivalries, injuries, pending litigation. It’s a nonstop party of repartee, and I threw away the invitation years ago.

Then, suddenly and unwittingly, I retrieved it.

As with many changes in my life, this one was accompanied by a horrendous hangover. Unable to move, I spent a Sunday lying incapacitated on a friend’s couch while he watched an entire day’s worth of football. In between gorging on McDonald’s and mentally plotting the fastest route to the bathroom, I passively let football wash over me, Terry Bradshaw commentary and all.

The next day at work was like walking through the looking glass. I magically understood every conversation I overheard in the elevators, hallways, and other office outposts of idle chatter — e.g., my desk: why, yes, I did see that catch; no, I couldn’t believe that interception; hey, I ate way too much guacamole too. I went to a meeting early and, instead of pretending to study the three-point agenda for 10 minutes, I actually made conversation. It was a whole new world of talking to people I could hardly stand.

Which, okay, when I put it that way, doesn’t really sound like a good thing. But it only took one day of tequila-addled partial awareness and I was up to speed on football. That’s my kind of learning curve. I could spend 100 Sundays watching Meet the Press and still not follow a debate on corporate-tax reform. Nine years of religious school under my belt, and I still can’t tell you where I stand on the subject of my soul. But one Sunday battling nausea on a couch, and I’m good to go for Monday-morning quarterbacking. Color me a fan.

Does this mean I’m going to ever pick up a baseball bat and face off with a tee again? There’s not enough therapy in the world to get me back out there.

Get Alan Olifson’s Final Four predictions at alan@olifsoncom