Accidentally doing something really good in sports

I’m terrible at sports.

When I was a kid I retired from soccer after just one season. In my final game I took a booted ball right to the face which snapped my glasses in two and caused me to crash to the field in a wet, goobery mess. Unfortunately, since we were low on players and couldn’t forfeit the big playoff game, I was forced to hang out on the field, blind and drippy, until the whistle blew.

And it wasn’t just soccer either. I hung up the cleats after a season of baseball too. Somehow I managed to bat fourteenth in the lineup and lead my team in hit by pitches. This was less because I crowded the plate with gritted teeth and steely determination and more because most twelve-year-olds can’t pitch straight and I have extremely slow reflexes.

Since I’m so bad at sports, I tend to overcelebrate any type of tiny sports victory I can get. I’m not talking about shooting a buzzer-beating three-pointer or catching a winning touchdown. No, I’m talking about any teeny-weeny play during the game where I get to feel like I actually did something right for a second.

Here are some of my faves:

1. The Air Hockey Self-Score. This is where your opponent fires the plastic puck so hard it bounces off your end and scores on their own net. Fist pumps all around.

2. The Accidental Pool Shot. Here’s where you aim for the six ball in the corner pocket but miss completely and send the cue ball spinning wildly around the table until it accidentally bumps another ball into a completely different pocket. We’ll take it.

3. Rim Rollers. Okay, over to basketball. This is when your shot bounces off the side of the backboard and clangs around for ten seconds, bouncing in every direction, before eventually, reluctantly, spinning around the rim and slowly falling into the basket.

4. The Lucky Golf Bounce. The only way my terrible golf shot is landing on the fairway is if it smacks off a tree trunk in the forest and pops back out. Bouncing a hundred feet in the air off the paved golf cart path might also do the trick.

5. The Slow Strike. Do you ever go bowling? If you’re as bad as I am you love that moment when your ball barely nudges a corner pin and causes a slowmotion domino effect that eventually gives you a strike. Time for a Stage Dance or Hulk Hogan pose.

6. The Tennis Drop-off. Here’s my favorite one of all. Yes, when you win a point in tennis by hitting the ball into the net and having it immediately fall over and die on the other side, that’s just perfect.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: These are all terrible cheap shots no athlete would be proud to score. But I’m no athlete, people. I’ll take my cheap shots when I get ’em if I get ’em. And, you know, maybe these little flukes are just the result of intense wanting and willing for success and therefore not flukes at all. No, maybe they’re deliberate interventions on the part of the Sports Gods in order to motivate us to keep on pushing.

AWESOME!